fgets() Post: 28017

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Top Forums Programming fgets() Post 28017 by Perderabo on Wednesday 11th of September 2002 09:32:45 AM

09-11-2002

Administrator Emeritus

in defense of fgets

Quote:

Originally posted by wolk
why complicate the simple stuff...?
why don't u use :

scanf("%s",&x );

I certainly agree with the sentiment "why complicate the simple stuff?". Still I have to say that fgets is, to me, a much simpler routine to understand than scanf. And even if it wasn't, scanf will do more work than fgets to acquire that string. Finally, the fgets solution will prevent buffer overflow. You will need to use something like:
scanf("%255s", &x);
to render this safe. And if the buffer is not a constant size you will need to dynamically build the format string that you pass to scanf.

scanf is great when you have a complex set of data, but to just read a single string, I would always go with fgets. Even for your second example, I might tend to go with fgets and atoi. But if it was, say, two integers and a string, I would use the scanf routine.

Perderabo

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LEARN ABOUT MINIX

gets

GETS(3) 						     Library Functions Manual							   GETS(3)

NAME

       gets, fgets - get a string from a stream

SYNOPSIS

       #include <stdio.h>

       char *gets(char *s)
       char *fgets(char *s, int n, FILE *stream)

DESCRIPTION

       Gets  reads  a string into s from the standard input stream stdin.  The string is terminated by a newline character, which is replaced in s
       by a null character.  Gets returns its argument.

       Fgets reads n-1 characters, or up through a newline character, whichever comes first, from the stream into the string s.  The last  charac-
       ter read into s is followed by a null character.  Fgets returns its first argument.

SEE ALSO

       puts(3), getc(3), scanf(3), fread(3), ferror(3).

DIAGNOSTICS

       Gets and fgets return the constant pointer NULL upon end of file or error.

BUGS

       Gets deletes a newline, fgets keeps it, all in the name of backward compatibility.

       Gets is not present in the Minix-vmd C library for reasons that should be obvious.  Use fgets instead.

7th Edition							   May 15, 1985 							   GETS(3)