Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 09:52:38 +0300
From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
Sender: halo1 AT zahav DOT net DOT il
To: ahelm AT gmx DOT net
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CC: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to: <12024.1021660112@www22.gmx.net> (ahelm@gmx.net)
Subject: Re: How to avoid kbhit() and getkey() ?
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> Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 20:28:32 +0200 (MEST)
> From: ahelm AT gmx DOT net
> 
> I'm using kbhit() and getkey() for simple user interaction
> e.g. yes/no or "any key" questions. But this is very DJGPP
> specific. Is there a way to write these things more portable,
> especially for UNIX environments?
> 
> There are 2 main functionalities:
> 1) empty the keyboard buffer:
> while(kbhit())
> {
>   getkey();
> }
> 
> 2) wait for and read a single key
> x = getkey();

The more portable way is to use termios and `select'.  Set the
keyboard to raw mode using `tcsetattr', drain the keyboard queue by
calling `tcflush', and then read individual characters with `getc' and
friends.  Should you need to avoid getting stuck inside `getc' while
it waits for the user to type something, use `select' to check if some
input is available.

Note that with this method, you gain portability to Posix systems, but
lose portability to DOS/Windows platforms other than DJGPP and Cygwin.