* Reply to a message in personal_mail.
David Van Hoose wrote in a message to Tom Torfs:
   RA> char name[40];
   RA> gets(name);
 DVH> If you do that verbatim, you will have an overflow problem with
 DVH> all known compilers. 
There's no way a compiler can fix this and remain ISO-compliant (at least in 
C but I suspect the C++ standard copied this) as gets() has to read 
characters until an EOF or newline is encountered.
 DVH> char name[40];
 DVH> gets(name);
 DVH> name[40]='\n';
 DVH> You have to put a NULL on the end or it will have an overflow
 DVH> problem. I believe you have to do that with 'fgets' as well..
 DVH> Just put the null character on the very end of the array.
First of all '\n' is not a NUL character (BTW, NULL should be used to refer 
to a pointer, although I'm aware that in C++ you can get away with it), you 
should use '\0' or plain 0.
But most important of all: your code itself overflows the array --- it can 
store only elements 0 through 39 and you try to store a character in element 
40.
Besides, AFAIK fgets() is required to add a NUL character (unlike e.g. 
strncpy), it just may or may not have a trailing newline.
greetings,
Tom
tomtorfs@village.uunet.be
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