Correct me if I am wrong, but there seems to be
no native support in D for getting a single char
from the keyboard.

While 'printf' has been elegantly replaced, nothing
as simple as a 'getch' or 'getche' equivalent seems
to exist in D.

The closest I could get to was to rely on Phobos'
std.cstream and using 'din.getch'. It is
currently not documented (unlike 'din.getc'),
but I regarded it as implied that it would work.

Unfortunately 'din.getche' has obviously the
same bug as its C counterpart in dmc - it
simply does not do what it should
(echoed 'getch').

The whole think makes me wondering if I have
overlooked something or if I am the last person
here using D console apps which actually expect
characters from the keyboard without EOLs
attached to them.

Remaining questions are:

- Can I rely on 'din.getch' being available in future,
even though it is not explicitly mentioned in the
Phobos docs?

- Will 'getche' eventually work properly one day?

- Is there any method available/planned in D for
reading extended keycodes from the keyboard?

On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 23:14:53 +1100, Bob W <nospam@aol.com> wrote:

> Correct me if I am wrong, but there seems to be
> no native support in D for getting a single char
> from the keyboard.

I used 'getch()' and that seemed to work okay.

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia

"Derek Parnell" <derek@psych.ward> wrote in message news:op.s5om75qa6b8z09@ginger.vic.bigpond.net.au...

> I used 'getch()' and that seemed to work okay.

Yes, we both know that it works (as opposed to getche() ).
But it is borrowed from good ol' C and I am wondering if
an enthusiastic D (and C) newbie would find a solution just
by digging through Phobos ....

Bob W wrote:
> Correct me if I am wrong, but there seems to be
> no native support in D for getting a single char
> from the keyboard.
> 
> While 'printf' has been elegantly replaced, nothing
> as simple as a 'getch' or 'getche' equivalent seems
> to exist in D.
> 
> The closest I could get to was to rely on Phobos'
> std.cstream and using 'din.getch'. It is
> currently not documented (unlike 'din.getc'),
> but I regarded it as implied that it would work.
> 
> Unfortunately 'din.getche' has obviously the
> same bug as its C counterpart in dmc - it
> simply does not do what it should
> (echoed 'getch').
> 
> The whole think makes me wondering if I have
> overlooked something or if I am the last person
> here using D console apps which actually expect
> characters from the keyboard without EOLs
> attached to them.
> 
> Remaining questions are:
> 
> - Can I rely on 'din.getch' being available in future,
> even though it is not explicitly mentioned in the
> Phobos docs?
> 
> - Will 'getche' eventually work properly one day?
> 
> - Is there any method available/planned in D for
> reading extended keycodes from the keyboard?
> 
> 
> 
getch() and getche() are not ANSI/ISO C (thus not "good ol' C"). They are Borland extensions if I'm not mistaken.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - CS/E student
"Certain aspects of D are a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural."

Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> getch() and getche() are not ANSI/ISO C (thus not "good ol' C"). They
> are Borland extensions if I'm not mistaken.
> 

Nevertheless both getch() and getche() are extremely useful and deserve their
places in D, regardless of whether or not they are part of any C standard.

What I'd really like is a full Curses-type, platform-independent (well, *nix/Windows) module in the standard library, but I'm fairly sure that's not going to happen at least any time soon. Curses itself is just such a pain in far too many respects.

"Bruno Medeiros" <daiphoenixNO@SPAMlycos.com> wrote in message news:du74jc$1hrs$3@digitaldaemon.com...

> getch() and getche() are not ANSI/ISO C (thus not "good ol' C"). They are Borland extensions if I'm not mistaken.
>

Tell me any major C compiler NOT featuring getch() or _getch().
It simply is a necessity having it as part of a C library. Therefore
it is widely available and it does not matter at all whether it is
standardized or not.

Bob W wrote:

> Tell me any major C compiler NOT featuring getch() or _getch().
> It simply is a necessity having it as part of a C library. Therefore
> it is widely available and it does not matter at all whether it is
> standardized or not.

Mac OS X only has "getchar"... "getch" is in (the bundled) ncurses.h
Of course, to use that you need to link to the libncurses.dylib too.

--anders

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> Bob W wrote:
> 
>> Tell me any major C compiler NOT featuring getch() or _getch().
>> It simply is a necessity having it as part of a C library. Therefore
>> it is widely available and it does not matter at all whether it is
>> standardized or not.
> 
> Mac OS X only has "getchar"... "getch" is in (the bundled) ncurses.h
> Of course, to use that you need to link to the libncurses.dylib too.
> 
> --anders

That's the same for all gcc everywhere, right?

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - CS/E student
"Certain aspects of D are a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural."

"Bruno Medeiros" <daiphoenixNO@SPAMlycos.com> wrote in message news:dubpb0$tki$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Anders F Björklund wrote:
>>
>> Mac OS X only has "getchar"... "getch" is in (the bundled) ncurses.h Of course, to use that you need to link to the libncurses.dylib too.
>>
>> --anders
>
> That's the same for all gcc everywhere, right?
>

Not everywhere - gcc based djgpp offers getch() in conio.h