Is this way of getting a formated input from stdin better than default scanf?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

#define BUF_SIZE 1024

int main() {

  char *buf = (char*)malloc(BUF_SIZE*sizeof(char));
  fgets(buf, BUF_SIZE, stdin);

  int a = 0;

  sscanf(buf, "%d", &a);

  printf("%d\n", a);

  free(buf);
  return 0;
}

I saw so many people saying to avoid scanf, so i made this. Is it better for using a string buffer on getting the user input?

I tried to make a better way to get the user input, avoiding scanf. So, i would like to know if this is really a better option, or if i can make it better.

Answer

I saw so many people saying to avoid scanf, so i made this. Is it better for using a string buffer on getting the user input?

They meant something different. You are stil using scanf. Avoiding scanf means: "write your own input parsing function"