What is the difference between gets and scanf

The syntax for gets function is as follows. If there is an error when receiving the string, the gets function will return a null value. The input is received by the gets function and stored in variable word1.

User does not need to implement these functions from the beginning. They can directly use them in their programs. The difference between scanf and gets is that, scanf ends taking input upon encountering a whitespace, newline or End Of File EOF and gets considers a whitespace as the part of the input string and ends the input upon encountering newline or EOF.

Using scanf or gets depends on the way to receive user input from the standard input which is the keyboard most of the time.

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Figure scanf with one input. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. What's the difference between gets and scanf? Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 11 months ago. Active 1 year, 8 months ago.

Viewed 62k times. It seems that both of them get input to message. Improve this question. Shihe Zhang Shihe Zhang 2, 5 5 gold badges 31 31 silver badges 50 50 bronze badges. Is everyone neglecting to mention that gets is deprecated on purpose? Even answers that are 4 years old say to avoid gets like the plague. I wasn't going to answer, but after so many answers ignoring this, I felt I had to point this out. Show 1 more comment.

Active Oldest Votes. The basic difference [in reference to your particular scenario], scanf ends taking input upon encountering a whitespace , newline or EOF gets considers a whitespace as a part of the input string and ends the input upon encountering newline or EOF. Improve this answer. Sourav Ghosh Sourav Ghosh k 16 16 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. In my answer, by saying taking input i meant storing non-whitespaces into the supplied buffer message.

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Whereas scanf allows you to be used safely by specifying the maximum amount of data to be scanned in: char message[42]; Well yes, but to start argueing on this, one might better define " safe " before. Lundin — alk. Safe as in "known to cause bugs, poorly-defined behavior and program crashes"? I can't think of many less safe functions in the C language.

Lundin: If having defined " unsafe " like you just did in your comment I fully agree, scanf is a blxxdy, dxxm, fxcking unsafe sxcker. I nearly ever and always refused playing with it. Dashboard Logout.

The scanf function can read input from keyboard and stores them according to the given format specifier. It reads the input till encountering a whitespace, newline or EOF. On other hand gets function is used to receive input from the keyboard till it encounters a newline or EOF.