Refactoring legacy C code for better usability: Handling string inputs safely
I need help solving I've encountered a strange issue with I've hit a wall trying to I've searched everywhere and can't find a clear answer. I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me. Building an application that processes user inputs requires robust handling of string data. While refactoring a legacy C component, I noticed that the existing code uses `gets()` to read user input from the console, which poses significant security risks due to buffer overflow vulnerabilities. I want to replace `gets()` with a safer alternative. After some exploration, I decided to use `fgets()` instead, which allows me to specify the buffer size and thus improve safety. Here's my initial attempt: ```c #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #define BUFFER_SIZE 256 int main() { char input[BUFFER_SIZE]; printf("Enter your input: "); fgets(input, BUFFER_SIZE, stdin); // Remove newline character if present input[strcspn(input, "\n")] = 0; printf("You entered: %s\n", input); return 0; } ``` This approach works well in terms of preventing buffer overflow, but I’m concerned about how `fgets()` handles newlines. The `strcspn()` function helps strip the newline, but I’m not sure if this is the best practice for all scenarios. Additionally, user experience could be improved if the input isn't making it into a specific format required downstream. Currently, any whitespace at the beginning or end is preserved. Should I also trim that? I’ve read about using `strtok()` for tokenization, but it seems a bit heavy-handed for this scenario. Next, I considered integrating a more comprehensive validation step for the input. If the input doesn't meet certain criteria (like length or character type), it should prompt the user for another attempt without crashing or entering an invalid state. Are there best practices for implementing such validation in this context? Moreover, I’m curious about performance implications when a large number of inputs are processed in a loop. Is there a way to buffer multiple inputs and handle them efficiently? Any insights or examples about enhancing usability while maintaining code safety would be extremely valuable. Thanks in advance for any guidance! This is part of a larger CLI tool I'm building. How would you solve this? I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. Thanks in advance! This issue appeared after updating to C 3.9. Has anyone dealt with something similar? For reference, this is a production desktop app. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this.