On Friday, 19 November 2021 at 17:36:55 UTC, BoQsc wrote:
> Let's say I want to write a simple program that asks for an input of a single character.
> After pressing a single key on a keyboard, the character is printed out and the program  should stop.

This is platform specific. About 10 lines of code for a minimum implementation per OS, but if you don't wanna do it that way my library has a function for it with a prepackaged sample:

http://arsd-official.dpldocs.info/arsd.terminal.html#single-key

that's arsd-official:terminal on dub or you can grab the file from my github repo.

I guess you could view my source to see the impl but I don't feel like pulling it out right now.

On Friday, 19 November 2021 at 18:01:57 UTC, Adam D Ruppe wrote:
> On Friday, 19 November 2021 at 17:36:55 UTC, BoQsc wrote:
>> Let's say I want to write a simple program that asks for an input of a single character.
>> After pressing a single key on a keyboard, the character is printed out and the program  should stop.
>
> This is platform specific. About 10 lines of code for a minimum implementation per OS, but if you don't wanna do it that way my library has a function for it with a prepackaged sample:
>
> http://arsd-official.dpldocs.info/arsd.terminal.html#single-key
>
> that's arsd-official:terminal on dub or you can grab the file from my github repo.
>
> I guess you could view my source to see the impl but I don't feel like pulling it out right now.

Thanks Adam.
I've tested and it does work on Windows 10.

> mkdir "read_character_project"
> cd "read_character_project"
> dub init
> dub add arsd-official:terminal
> notepad ./source/app.d

import arsd.terminal;

void main() {
	auto terminal = Terminal(ConsoleOutputType.linear);
	auto input = RealTimeConsoleInput(&terminal, ConsoleInputFlags.raw);

	terminal.writeln("Press any key to continue...");
	auto ch = input.getch();
	terminal.writeln("You pressed ", ch);
}


> dub run

Performing "debug" build using C:\Program Files\LDC 1.28\bin\ldc2.exe for x86_64.
arsd-official:terminal 10.3.10: target for configuration "normal" is up to date.
arsd ~master: target for configuration "application" is up to date.
To force a rebuild of up-to-date targets, run again with --force.
Running arsd.exe
Press any key to continue...
You pressed u

___

Of interest, I also tried to look up getch() inside
http://arsd-official.dpldocs.info/source/arsd.terminal.d.html#L2867

But the source file overwhelmed me by its size.

For now I'm still interested in a more simple standalone implementation that would be more learning friendly, or at least with little explanation of basic things behind the code and how it is interfacing with the operating system, the native library.

On Friday, 19 November 2021 at 20:51:09 UTC, BoQsc wrote:
> But the source file overwhelmed me by its size.

Yeah, the getch function in there builds on the rest of the events the library offers, so it won't be that useful outside.


The OS functions for getch alone though are actually pretty simple:

1) change the terminal to "raw" mode. the default is to buffer lines, which means your application doesn't get anything until a line is complete. You need to turn that off.

The RealTimeConsoleInput constructor does this in the lib:
http://arsd-official.dpldocs.info/v10.3.8/source/arsd.terminal.d.html#L2487

On Windows, you basically just call `SetConsoleMode`, but since the console is a shared resource, you also need to save the old mode to set it back later (that's what I do in the destructor of the struct).

On Linux, you call `tcsetattr`. The function for mine is here:
http://arsd-official.dpldocs.info/v10.3.8/source/arsd.terminal.d.html#L2620

Again, the terminal is a shared resource (this is actually even more true on linux systems!) so it is important to save the old one and set it back when you're done. There's a lot of ways this can happen so you should handle them all - that's why there's a bunch of signal handler blocks there.

Other things the library initialize is if you want echo, mouse input, paste events, resize notifications, etc. But if you only care about getch you can ignore most that stuff.

2) Read the terminal's event stream. On Windows, you call `ReadConsoleInput` and process the struct it sends you for a keyevent. See: http://arsd-official.dpldocs.info/v10.3.8/source/arsd.terminal.d.html#L3122

On Linux, you call the system `read` function on the stdin stream (file number 0). Basic keys will come as a single byte read on there. Others get.... extremely complicated.
http://arsd-official.dpldocs.info/v10.3.8/source/arsd.terminal.d.html#L3369

And it goes on for about 400 lines! And it depends on some of that other initialization we skipped over before and uses a database of terminal quirks found elsewhere in the file.

Windows' API is far, far easier to use.


But the Linux one isn't bad if you only want basic alphanumeric and enter keys. You can read those as a single ascii byte off the read function, so for that you can do it in just a few lines.

3) Again, remember to set it back how you found it before you exit by callling the SetConsoleMode/tcsetattr again before you exit.

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 10:21:42PM +0000, Adam Ruppe via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote: [...]
> The OS functions for getch alone though are actually pretty simple:
> 
> 1) change the terminal to "raw" mode. the default is to buffer lines, which means your application doesn't get anything until a line is complete. You need to turn that off.
[...]
> 2) Read the terminal's event stream.
[...]
> 3) Again, remember to set it back how you found it before you exit by callling the SetConsoleMode/tcsetattr again before you exit.

And *this* is why you want to use a library for this.  Doing this by hand is certainly possible, but very tedious, error-prone, and requires a lot of knowledge about OS system calls.  Why bother when you could just drop arsd.terminal into your workspace and call it a day?  :-)

(Of course, learning how things work under the hood for the sake of educating yourself is definitely worthwhile. Just don't do that when you need to get stuff done.)


T

-- 
Let's not fight disease by killing the patient. -- Sean 'Shaleh' Perry

On Friday, 19 November 2021 at 17:36:55 UTC, BoQsc wrote:
> Let's say I want to write a simple program that asks for an input of a single character.
> After pressing a single key on a keyboard, the character is printed out and the program  should stop.

module test;

void main()
{
    import core.stdc.stdio : getchar, puts, putchar;
    puts("Enter a character:");
    putchar(getchar());
}