Question: The C standard library is notoriously poor when it comes to I/O safety. Many functions have buffer overflows (`gets`, `scanf`), or can clobber memory if not given proper arguments (`scanf`), and so on. Every once in a while, I come across an enterprising hacker who has written his own library that lacks these flaws.

What are the best of these libraries you have seen? Have you used them in production code, and if so, which held up as more than hobby projects?

Answer: 
You're always at liberty to implement any library you like and to use it - the hard part is making sure it is available on the platforms you need your software to work on. You can also use wrappers around the standard functions where appropriate.

Whether it is really a good idea is somewhat debatable, but there is TR24731 published by the C standard committee - for a safer set of C functions. There's definitely some good stuff in there. See this question: [Do you use the TR 24731 Safe Functions in your C code?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/372980/do-you-use-the-tr-24731-safe-functions-in-your-c-code), which includes links to the technical report.
Maybe the first question to ask is if your really need plain C? (maybe a language like .net or java is an option - then e.g. buffer overflows are not really a problem anymore)

Another option is maybe to write parts of your project in C++ if other higher level languages are not an option. You can then have a C interface which encapsulates the C++ code if you really need C.

Because if you add all the advanced functions the C++ standard library has build in - your C code would only be marginally faster most times (and contain a lot more bugs than an existing and tested framework).