Picking up keyboard input

Hey,

So I've got this program that I'm writing that controls various things happening on screen. Nothing fancy, just an ascii interface of sorts.

Anyway, I've been using the fgetc and fgets commands to read input from stdin to make things happen, but now I would like to not have to press enter each time I want to do something. I would like to be able to simpley hit a button and have some reaction.

I'm sure that there is a standard function for this, but I don't know what it is.

Any suggestions?

B

You can use non-standard <console.h> header file.
But it is better to use platform specific functions for best performance. Which OS are you using?

Thanks man,

I'm working on the OSX command line, so for all intents and purposes BSD.

B

> I'm sure that there is a standard function for this, but I don't know what it is.
Well there isn't.
Read the FAQ.

Ok,

Read the faq. Always good advice. Looks to me as though what I am really looking for here is the curses.h library.

My computer has got a curses.h file! I went online and got a little example code. The curses.h library that i've got seems to define all the functions that the example code is looking for, but the linker doesn't seem to be able to find them?????

What am I doing wrong here?

B

gcc -lncurses

-ln curses?

Rocken!

Thanks fellas.

I'm up and running!

B

Quote:

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Originally Posted by siavoshkc

-ln curses?

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Nah, the lib is actually called "ncurses" on most *nix boxes. I believe it stands for "New Curses".

So it is -l ncurses, yeah?

Yup. I have yet to find a system, however, that didn't work with -lncurses.

See also http://c-faq.com/osdep/cbreak.html

The FAQ talks about getch() in conio.h ... but, again, alas and all that, this is non-standard.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by twomers

The FAQ talks about getch() in conio.h ... but, again, alas and all that, this is non-standard.

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Yes, there's no standard way, as Salem already said.