Why is the gets function so dangerous that it should not be used?

Additional info:

From man 3 gets on Linux Ubuntu you'll see (emphasis added):

DESCRIPTION
       Never use this function.

And, from the cppreference.com wiki here (https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/io/gets) you'll see: Notes Never use gets().:

Notes

The gets() function does not perform bounds checking, therefore this function is extremely vulnerable to buffer-overflow attacks. It cannot be used safely (unless the program runs in an environment which restricts what can appear on stdin). For this reason, the function has been deprecated in the third corrigendum to the C99 standard and removed altogether in the C11 standard. fgets() and gets_s() are the recommended replacements.

Never use gets().

As you can see, the function has been deprecated and removed entirely in C11 or later.

Use fgets() or gets_s() instead.

Here is my demo usage of fgets(), with full error checking:

From read_stdin_fgets_basic_input_from_user.c:

#include <errno.h>   // `errno`
#include <stdio.h>   // `printf()`, `fgets()`
#include <stdlib.h>  // `exit()`
#include <string.h>  // `strerror()`

// int main(int argc, char *argv[])  // alternative prototype
int main()
{
    char buf[10];

    // NEVER USE `gets()`! USE `fgets()` BELOW INSTEAD!

    // USE THIS!: `fgets()`: "file get string", which reads until either EOF is
    // reached, OR a newline (`\n`) is found, keeping the newline char in
    // `buf`.
    // For `feof()` and `ferror()`, see:
    // 1. https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/io/feof
    // 1. https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/io/ferror
    printf("Enter up to %zu chars: ", sizeof(buf) - 1); // - 1 to save room
                                                        // for null terminator
    char* retval = fgets(buf, sizeof(buf), stdin);
    if (feof(stdin))
    {
        // Check for `EOF`, which means "End of File was reached".
        // - This doesn't really make sense on `stdin` I think, but it is a good
        //   check to have when reading from a regular file with `fgets
        //   ()`. Keep it here regardless, just in case.
        printf("EOF (End of File) reached.\n");
    }
    if (ferror(stdin))
    {
        printf("Error indicator set. IO error when reading from file "
               "`stdin`.\n");
    }
    if (retval == NULL)
    {
        printf("ERROR in %s(): fgets() failed; errno = %i: %s\n",
            __func__, errno, strerror(errno));

        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    size_t num_chars_written = strlen(buf) + 1; // + 1 for null terminator
    if (num_chars_written >= sizeof(buf))
    {
        printf("Warning: user input may have been truncated! All %zu chars "
               "were written into buffer.\n", num_chars_written);
    }
    printf("You entered \"%s\".\n", buf);


    return 0;
}

Sample runs and output:

eRCaGuy_hello_world/c$ gcc -Wall -Wextra -Werror -O3 -std=c17 read_stdin_fgets_basic_input_from_user.c -o bin/a && bin/a
Enter up to 9 chars: hello world!
Warning: user input may have been truncated! All 10 chars were written into buffer.
You entered "hello wor".

eRCaGuy_hello_world/c$ gcc -Wall -Wextra -Werror -O3 -std=c17 read_stdin_fgets_basic_input_from_user.c -o bin/a && bin/a
Enter up to 9 chars: hey
You entered "hey
".

In a few words gets() (can) be dangerous because the user might input something bigger than what the variable has enough space to store. First answer says about fgets() and why it is safer.