I understand, and yes, the pow thing was part of the project that referred to the chapter on loops, so it was part of the practice. However we had to use about 6 to 8 more loops in the same project, so it wasn't clear to me that we had to do something so trivial using a loop until a friend told me.
And although I see quite clearly why fgets is a much more safe apporach and good practice, we haven't been taught it yet, so I'm not going to risk a point off my project just for being more correct.