C gets function

C gets function

gets function is used to collect a string which is a collection of characters terminated by a new line from the standard input stream stdin.

this gets function is part of stdio.h library.

gets function with character array

gets function is used here to read the string in console for character array variable and prints the string.

#include<stdio.h>                                                              
                                                                                
void main()                                                                     
{                                                                               
 char websiteurl[100];                                                          
 printf("\nEnter website url: ");                                               
 gets(websiteurl);                                                              
 printf("website url is: %s\n", websiteurl);                                    
}   

Output:

$ cc gets_function.c
gets_function.c: In function ‘main’:
gets_function.c:7:15: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘gets’ [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
  websiteurl = gets();
               ^~~~
gets_function.c:7:13: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast [-Wint-conversion]
  websiteurl = gets();
             ^
/tmp/ccf3r9o5.o: In function `main':
gets_function.c:(.text+0x1d): warning: the `gets' function is dangerous and should not be used.
$ ./a.out 

Enter website url: coding pointer. com
website url is: coding pointer. com

Output:

$ cc gets_function.c
gets_function.c: In function ‘main’:
gets_function.c:7:2: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘gets’ [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
  gets(websiteurl);
  ^~~~
/tmp/ccG4qtsI.o: In function `main':
gets_function.c:(.text+0x24): warning: the `gets' function is dangerous and should not be used.
$ ./a.out 

Enter website url: www.codingpointer.com

gets function with character pointers

gets function is used here to read the string in console for character pointer variable and prints the string.

#include<stdio.h>                                                             
                                                                                
void main()                                                                     
{                                                                               
 char *websiteurl;                                                              
 printf("\nEnter website url: ");                                               
 websiteurl = gets();                                                           
 printf("website url is: %s\n", websiteurl);                                    
}     

gets function advantage over scanf function

Let us see the exanple to read a string using scanf function.

#include                                                               
                                                                                
void main()                                                                     
{                                                                               
 char websiteurl[100];                                                          
 printf("\nEnter website url: ");                                               
 scanf("%s", websiteurl);                                                       
 printf("website url is: %s\n", websiteurl);                                    
}  

Output:

$ cc gets_function.c
$ ./a.out 

Enter website url: www.coding pointer. com
website url is: www.coding

Here user eneters string 'www.coding pointer. com', scanf function considers www.coding is one string value, pointer. is another string value and com is the third string value. In output you could see only www.coding as the string value for websiteurl variable.

But if we use gets function instead of scanf function, reads the complete text which is terminated by new line characters.