gets() function Not Safe?

[bronyrstomp]

Why do I get this in my program while it is running. Is it a runtime error?
I am just teaching myself C and C++. I have a lot of questions.
The vastest things are those we may not learn.
We are not taught to die, nor to be born,
Nor how to burn
With love.
How pitiful is our enforced return
To those small things we are the masters of.
                          - Mervyn Peake

 

[SwapSawe]

Strange!!! However yes it is unsafe to use gets() since it may cause memory leak, as we do not have any control on user as to how many bytes of data he can write in when we request an input from him using gets, so we should be better off using fgets() restricting useer to a max. of array size. But I have never seen any runtime or compiletime error or even warning like this, Can you please paste the code and your compiler type.

Thanx 'n' Regards,
SwapSawe.s-)

 

[bronyrstomp]

The compiler is g++ that comes with FreeBSD.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <curses.h>

char Pause(void)
{
    char c;
    printf(&quot;\nPress enter to continue...&quot;)
    while ((c = getchar()) != '\n') {}
    return;
}

int main ()
{
    char name [80];
    clrscr();
    puts(&quot;What is your name? &quot;;
    gets(name);
    puts(&quot;&quot;);
    puts(&quot;Your name is:&quot;);
    puts(name);

    Pause();
    return 0;
}
[\code] 
The vastest things are those we may not learn.
We are not taught to die, nor to be born,
Nor how to burn
With love.
How pitiful is our enforced return
To those small things we are the masters of.
                          - Mervyn Peake

 

[greatkingrat]

I think clrscr is conio.h function and curses.h
doesn't have it.

So it is not run-time error, maybe your linker
was failed.

But this program has potential error caused
by using gets, as SwapSawe explained.
Hee S. Chung
heesc@netian.com

http://www.netian.com/~heesc

 

[tw500]

The GNU compiler/linker warns about several potentially dangerous routines such as gets and tmpnam. These routines create buffer overrun vulnerability (as described previously) and should be avoided. Such errors can be used to compromise system security.