The gets() function is a C library function that reads a line from the standard input (stdin) and stores it into a string pointed to by a char pointer¹. The function stops reading when either a newline character is encountered or the end-of-file is reached¹.

Here is an example of using the gets() function:

The output of this program might look like this:

However, the gets() function is very dangerous and should not be used, because it does not check the array bound and can cause buffer overflow²³. A buffer overflow is a situation where a program writes more data to a fixed-length buffer than the buffer can hold, which can corrupt adjacent memory or cause unexpected behavior³.

A safer alternative to gets() is the fgets() function, which takes an additional parameter to specify the maximum number of characters to be read, including the null character². The fgets() function also reads from a specified stream, which can be stdin or any other file pointer².

Here is an example of using the fgets() function:

The output of this program might look like this: