gets()
Reads characters from the standard input (stdin) and stores them as a C string into str until a newline character or the end-of-file is reached.
- It is not safe to use because it does not check the array bound.
- It is used to read strings from the user until a newline character is not encountered.
Syntax
char *gets( char *str );
Parameters
- str: Pointer to a block of memory (array of char) where the string read is copied as a C string.
Return Value
- The function returns a pointer to the string where input is stored.
Example of gets()
Suppose we have a character array of 15 characters and the input is greater than 15 characters, gets() will read all these characters and store them into a variable. Since, gets() does not check the maximum limit of input characters, at any time compiler may return buffer overflow error.
C++
// C program to illustrate// gets()#include <stdio.h>#define MAX 15int main(){ // defining buffer char buf[MAX]; printf("Enter a string: "); // using gets to take string from stdin gets(buf); printf("string is: %s\n", buf); return 0;} |
Since gets() reads input from the user, we need to provide input during runtime.
Input: Hello and welcome to w3wiki Output: Hello and welcome to w3wiki
fgets() and gets() in C language
For reading a string value with spaces, we can use either gets() or fgets() in C programming language. Here, we will see what is the difference between gets() and fgets().