[comp.lang.c] Re^2: retiring gets

maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath) (11/25/88)

mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
\I don't understand how you can get something like

\    gets(3);

\past a compiler. Isn't 'gets' supposed to take a char * argument,
\not an int literal?

You should have crossposted to rec.humor.funny!
-- 
fcntl(fd, F_SETFL, FNDELAY):          |Maarten Litmaath @ VU Amsterdam:
      let's go weepin' in the corner! |maart@cs.vu.nl, mcvax!botter!maart

swarbric@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Frank Swarbrick) (11/26/88)

In article <1704@solo9.cs.vu.nl> maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath) writes:
:mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
:\I don't understand how you can get something like
:\    gets(3);
:\past a compiler. Isn't 'gets' supposed to take a char * argument,
:\not an int literal?
:
:You should have crossposted to rec.humor.funny!

I don't see what's so funny about it.  It's a very legitimate question if you
don't have much experience with UNIX.  The only thing I use UNIX for is reading
these messages, and I have no idea what the '3' means, though I do know that
it's not meant as a parameter.

Frank Swarbrick (and, yes, the net.cat)       University Of Colorado, Boulder
swarbric@tramp.Colorado.EDU          ...!{ncar|nbires}!boulder!tramp!swarbric
"Cling to the past and you'll be left behind." --Y & T

charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer) (11/27/88)

In article <4881@boulder.Colorado.EDU> swarbric@tramp.Colorado.EDU 
(Frank Swarbrick) writes:
> It's a very legitimate question if you don't have much experience with 
> UNIX.  The only thing I use UNIX for is reading these messages, and I 
> have no idea what the '3' means, though I do know that it's not meant
> as a parameter.

It's which section of UNIX manual the documentation is in.  Some
commands/functions appear in more than one section of the manual.
There is a chmod(1), a chmod(2), and a chmod(3F), for example.
"man chmod" gets the first, "man 2 chmod" the second, and "man 3
chmod" the third.  The first is the UNIX command executed from the
shell, the second programs callable from C, and the third is callable
from FORTRAN.  (Of course there only one gets so "gets(3S)" is not
really necessary, but the UNIX manuals always refers to is that way.)

joe@modcomp.UUCP (11/28/88)

David Collier-Brown (yunexus!lethe!dave) writes:

>   This raises the interesting, and possibly invidious, question of
> why the ANSI C standard includes gets...  It may prove advisable to
> ask for its elimination on the next (NOT! current) round of
> standardization, and a request from the (U.S) DOD Computer Security
> Center (sic) for an exception in the validation suite...

Any elimination of gets will have to be done now, not later.  Just look at
the experiences the Fortran 8x committee has had in trying to deprecate old
features.  And deprecation isn't even as controversial as removal ...

Joe Korty
uunet!modcomp!joe

rbutterworth@watmath.waterloo.edu (Ray Butterworth) (11/29/88)

In article <4881@boulder.Colorado.EDU>, swarbric@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Frank Swarbrick) writes:
> In article <1704@solo9.cs.vu.nl> maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath) writes:
> :\I don't understand how you can get something like
> :\    gets(3);
> :\past a compiler. Isn't 'gets' supposed to take a char * argument,
> :\not an int literal?
> :
> :You should have crossposted to rec.humor.funny!
> 
> I don't see what's so funny about it.  It's a very legitimate question if you
> don't have much experience with UNIX.

And don't forget, this is "comp.lang.c".
I don't see anything about unix there.
There are a lot of people that use C that don't use unix.
The name(section) convention is strictly a unix documentation
convention and has nothing to do with the c language or its
documentation on other systems.

rob@kaa.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere) (11/29/88)

In article <4881@boulder.Colorado.EDU> swarbric@tramp.Colorado.EDU 
(Frank Swarbrick) writes:
> [ a poor person isn't familiar with Ugh!nix manual pages, and asks
>   about the silly 3; somebody else thinks that's funny. ]
>I don't see what's so funny about it.  It's a very legitimate question if you
>don't have much experience with UNIX. The only thing I use UNIX for is reading
>these messages, and I have no idea what the '3' means, though I do know that
>it's not meant as a parameter.

Seconded.  Nor should you know, since, as all good people are aware, we
*never* use numbers for things that are not numbers, such as
categories (Eunuchs manual pages notwithstanding).

SR
Besides, the correct entry is gets(46).