Read user input until ESC is pressed in C

Question

Is there a way to read user input until the ESC key(or any other key) is pressed? I've seen forums about it but they've all been for C++. I need to make one that works for C. Thanks

Answer 1

Let's check 'esc' character in ascii table:

$ man ascii | grep -i ESC
033   27    1B    ESC (escape)
$

Therefore, it's ascii value is:

• '033' - Octal Value
• '27' - Integer Value
• '1B' - Hexadecimal Value
• 'ESC' - Character Value

A sample program using integer value of 'ESC':

#include <stdio.h>

int main (void)
{
    int c;

    while (1) {
        c = getchar();            // Get one character from the input
        if (c == 27) { break; }  // Exit the loop if we receive ESC
        putchar(c);               // Put the character to the output
    }

    return 0;
}

Hope that helps!