Reads characters from the standard input (stdin) and stores them as a C string into str until a newline character or the end-of-file is reached.
The newline character, if found, is not copied into str.
A terminating null character is automatically appended after the characters copied to str.
Notice that gets is quite different from fgets: not only gets uses stdin as source, but it does not include the ending newline character in the resulting string and does not allow to specify a maximum size for str (which can lead to buffer overflows).
Parameters
str
Pointer to a block of memory (array of char) where the string read is copied as a C string.
Return Value
On success, the function returns str.
If the end-of-file is encountered while attempting to read a character, the eof indicator is set (feof). If this happens before any characters could be read, the pointer returned is a null pointer (and the contents of str remain unchanged).
If a read error occurs, the error indicator (ferror) is set and a null pointer is also returned (but the contents pointed by str may have changed).
Compatibility
The most recent revision of the C standard (2011) has definitively removed this function from its specification.
The function is deprecated in C++ (as of 2011 standard, which follows C99+TC3).
Example
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/* gets example */
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
char string [256];
printf ("Insert your full address: ");
gets (string); // warning: unsafe (see fgets instead)
printf ("Your address is: %s\n",string);
return 0;
}