Bill Patterson wrote in a message to All:

 BP> I'm using gcc2 2.5.8 on the Hobbes RTR Nov 1994 CD.

 BP> I'd use emx except I can't get it to run. Anyways, gcc works
 BP> (mostly) great. I do have one little problem though. When I
 BP> use gets() I get a error when I try to run my program.
 BP> Printed on the screen is a message saying gets() is
 BP> unstable. What is a suitable bit of code to use that I can
 BP> substitute for gets(). I've tried all sorts of work arounds
 BP> using getchar() and getc(). I can't seem to properly detect
 BP> the end of the input string (a EOF or a CR). Could some one
 BP> punch in a brief example of a gets() routine?

The problem is that gets() is inherently unstable because it was defined
that way in the C language, and its use in new code is to be deprecated. 
There is no way for a caller to notify gets() about the length of the
buffer available to it, and therefore no way for gets() to be sure that it
does not overrun that buffer.

The preferred solution is to use fgets() on the stdin FILE object, since
this function takes an argument that specfies the size of the buffer. 
There are subtle differences in the behavior of gets() and fgets(),
particularly that gets() strips the newline character and fgets() preserves
it.  In fact, if the string returned from fgets() does not end with a
newline character, this is the signal that fgets() stopped because it
reached the end of the buffer rather than because of the end of input.

This is, however, a general C programming issue, not specific to OS/2.

 BP> Even better, is there a way to use newer libraries with gcc
 BP> that might have a fixed gets()?

GCC/2 is no longer supported.  The EMX package is recommended and supported.
 
-- Mike


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