How to enter a line of data in C?

[advancedk]

Hi

I have the code

	printf("Enter the characters:\n");
	char enc_numbers[10]; //Read in characters
	gets(enc_numbers);

Which I am using to read in a line of characters between 1 and 10 (inclusive) characters long. However, if I put this under a previous line using scanf it doesn't work (I'm using scanf to get a single inputted number, which always works).

I heard that using gets is bad - is this true and how should I read in a line of characters where I don't know how many are going to be entered?

Thanks