"You shouldn't use gets(), it's dangerous and deprecated".

Heh.

No, I realize the code is from 1989 and gets() was not on the hitlist by then.

What is not so clear is if the first the author wrote after studying the posted code for a week, looked the same? I mean even in 1989 this must have been a bit controversial/extreme[1], but there is no mention of those aspects. I'm not sure what is being communicated, really.

[1] I don't think I had started writing C for real by then but if this was Basic code I would have screamed at it. :)