I'm writing a text-based game in C++. At some point, I ask the user to input user names corresponding to the different players playing.
I'm currently reading single char from ncurses like so:
move(y,x);
printw("Enter a char");
int char = getch();
However, I'm not sure how to a string. I'm looking for something like:
move(y,x);
printw("Enter a name: ");
std::string name = getstring();
I've seen many different guides for using ncurses all using a different set of functions that the other doesn't. As far as I can tell the lines between deprecated and non-deprecated functions is not very well defined.
How about this?
std::string getstring()
{
std::string input;
// let the terminal do the line editing
nocbreak();
echo();
// this reads from buffer after <ENTER>, not "raw"
// so any backspacing etc. has already been taken care of
int ch = getch();
while ( ch != '\n' )
{
input.push_back( ch );
ch = getch();
}
// restore your cbreak / echo settings here
return input;
}
I would discourage using the alternative *scanw() function family. You would be juggling a temporary char [] buffer, the underlying *scanf() functionality with all its problems, plus the specification of *scanw() states it returns ERR or OK instead of the number of items scanned, further reducing its usefulness.
While getstr() (suggested by user indiv) looks better than *scanw() and does special handling of function keys, it would still require a temporary char [], and I try to avoid those in C++ code, if for nothing else but avoiding some arbitrary buffer size.
