Making text menus

[kzar]

Hi I need to do a text menu for my program. I know that I could just use printf, fgets and sscanf but there are a few problems.

Say if I want 1 digit from the user to use as their choice in the menu I can do it but the user can type as much as he wants untill he presses enter. Everything but the first digit is ignored but I still think its unprofesional. I would like the program to instantly take the number he pressed right away, withought having to press enter first.

Also I would like to be able to display things as the user is typing things sometimes.

Anyone have an idea? Thanks

[quzah]

This is OS and compiler specific. There is no standard way to read a keystroke. Also, if you're just reading single keystrokes, why can't you wait till that single action has taken place to display something. It's not as if it actually takes any significant time to press a key.

Quzah.

[Dave_Sinkula]

FAQ > How do I... (Level 2) > How can I get input without having the user hit [Enter]?

[kzar]

Thanks getch() seems to work with my compiler (Sorry for not reading that faq). I wont worry about the blocking text input for the things more than one character because it doesn't matter too much.

Now the idea of this sniplet is it will take a 1 character input and if its not a number 0 - 6 it spits it back. It doesn't work though

while (choice = getch() > 6 || !isdigit(choice))
    printf ("Woops, '%d' isn't a valid choice\n", choice);

printf("You chose: %d\n", choice);

It says X isn't a valid choice no matter what you type, even if it is.

Thanks

[Dave_Sinkula]

while ((choice = getch()) > '6' || !isdigit(choice))
    printf ("Woops, '%c' isn't a valid choice\n", choice);

printf("You chose: %c\n", choice);

[kzar]

while ((choice = getch()) > '6' || !isdigit(choice))
    printf ("Woops, '%c' isn't a valid choice\n", choice);

printf("You chose: %c\n", choice);

Thanks, works great.

[kzar]

Incase anyone is interested I found a way to use curses on dev-c++ at this page: http://devpaks.org/show.php?devpak=7 .

edit: I have found a good tutorial here: http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Pro...elloworld.html