Thread: "real-time" user-input and graphics

Hello world!
I was wondering about what should I need to develop simple, ASCII graphics applications, that are "more interactive", than the standard input. What I mean is, like developing a console-based file browser, like norton commander. How can I achieve that kind of "real-time" input-output? How can I make the program react to pressing a button, without an enter being hit? How can I make the cursos "jump around" the screen, where I need it? I could not find anything like these, with the use of the standard library, and other stuff, like SDL provide much more, than I need. I only want some "old-school" ASCII graphics software, which would be used from console, with a simple keyboard. Well, anyone has any experiences on this topic? Thanks!

Use curses (ncurses being the popular free implementation) if you're on a Unix-like system. I don't know about others.

Thanks, I'll check it out. I would like it to be platform-independent.

Originally Posted by laczfinador

Thanks, I'll check it out. I would like it to be platform-independent.

If you're using cursor moves, real time input, etc. it's not going to be very portable at all. Each OS has it's own way of displaying a CMDL interface and, for the most part, they're quite dissimilar.

At the risk of stepping in it...
Why on earth would anyone want to write a console mode file browser?