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2347

answers:

3

I'm having some problems getting ncurses' getch() to block. Default operation seems to be non-blocking (or have I missed some initialization)? I would like it to work like getch() in Windows. I have tried various versions of

timeout(3000000);
nocbreak();
cbreak();
noraw();
etc...

(not all at the same time). I would prefer to not (explicitly) use any WINDOW, if possible. A while loop around getch(), checking for a specific return value is OK too.

+2  A: 

From a man page (emphasis added):

The timeout and wtimeout routines set blocking or non-blocking read for a given window. If delay is negative, blocking read is used (i.e., waits indefinitely for input).

Rob Kennedy
#include <ncurses.h> void main() { timeout(-3000000); getch(); }does not block for me. Any clues?
Jonas Byström
It's assumed that you're using the rest of curses properly, including initialization.
Rob Kennedy
+3  A: 

You need to call initscr() or newterm() to initialize curses before it will work. This works fine for me:

#include <ncurses.h>

int main() {
    WINDOW *w;
    char c;

    w = initscr();
    timeout(3000);
    c = getch();
    endwin();

    printf("received %c (%d)\n", c, (int) c);
}
Curt Sampson
+6  A: 

The curses library is a package deal. You can't just pull out one routine and hope for the best without properly initializing the library. Here's a code that correctly blocks on getch():

#include <curses.h>

int main(void) {
  initscr();
  timeout(-1);
  int c = getch();
  endwin();
  printf ("%d %c\n", c, c);
  return 0;
}
Norman Ramsey