Using fgets() to store string in memory

[August Derleth]

Are you *sure* it solves the OP problem? Please engage your brain
*before* replying ;-)

Dan, it solves the general problem in a rather elegant way and I think you
know it.

Given your beef with the silent truncation behavior of fgets(), fggets()
should be a breath of fresh air: Automatic reallocation with a noisy
failure if it fails to grab any more core. You need to call free() on the
pointer you sent in, but, as you commonly say, it's simply a matter of
"engaging the brain".

"Engage the brain" indeed. If it were any simpler, it would be C++. ;-)

 

[Dan Pop]

It solves his problem in that it allows him to get a string from
the operator without worrying about the length of that string, and
elides any final '\n'.

But this is not his *stated* problem. That's why I asked you to engage
your brain before replying ;-)

Dan

 

[Dan Pop]

I might miss something here. Why is fgets useless? I can see that using a
number of other library functions the same results can be achieved as with
fgets, but I still do not see why it is badly designed. From a API
development point of view I would say it covers everything needed to be
simple but complete in it's functionality. I'm just curious to the reason
for the comment.

I have addressed this issue countless times, in this very newsgroup, so
Google is your friend.

Basically, after writing the code using fgets in a bullet-proof manner,
you realise that a getc-based solution would have been simpler.

If truncation of superlong lines is what you want, scanf is your friend.
Every time I've challenged someone to do that with fgets in a bullet-proof
manner, I've got a broken solution, missing one failure mode or another.

If truncation is not an option, a solution that can handle arbitrary
long lines via dynamic input buffer reallocation is needed and fgets
doesn't even come close.

Dan

 

[Dan Pop]

You are innately evil, and are attempting to corrupt the innocent
youths of the world

I was merely giving him what he was asking for:

What's the syntax for using fgets() to store a string in memory? I
understand that fgets() can solve the problem of storing a string
that has more characters than the size of the declared array.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Unless I'm missing something, gets() works far better than fgets() for
this purpose ;-)

Dan

 

[Richard Bos]

Given your beef with the silent truncation behavior of fgets(), fggets()
should be a breath of fresh air:

"Engage the brain" indeed. If it were any simpler, it would be C++. ;-)

Ok, this tells me I should never use the ggets package: if it were any
simpler, it would be an over-designed, over-complicated, under-
understood monstrosity, with delusions of grandeur. Think how unusable
it must be now...

Richard

 

[August Derleth]

Ok, this tells me I should never use the ggets package: if it were any
simpler, it would be an over-designed, over-complicated, under-
understood monstrosity, with delusions of grandeur. Think how unusable
it must be now...

Heh. Very funny. ;-)

 

[CBFalconer]

Ok, this tells me I should never use the ggets package: if it
were any simpler, it would be an over-designed, over-complicated,
under-understood monstrosity, with delusions of grandeur. Think
how unusable it must be now...

Decide for yourself:

<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net/download/ggets.zip>