C++ Detect when user presses arrow key

Question

I have been having a problem with detecting arrow key presses in my C++ console application. I have tried everything I have found, both here and on other tutorial sites, but all of them give me the same thing whenever I press the arrow:

Process returned 0 <0x0> execution time : 2.249 s
Press any key to continue.

Here are all the methods of detecting the key press that I have tried, all ending up the same way. These are the only two left in my code, the others I attempted I deleted instead of commenting out.

Method one:

c1 = getch();
if(c1 == 0)
{

    c2 = getch();

    if(c2 == 72) {cout << endl << "Up Arrow" << endl;}
    else if(c2 == 80) {cout << endl << "Down Arrow" << endl;}
    else{cout << endl << "Incorrect Input" << endl;}

}

Method two:

switch(getch()) {
case 65:
       cout << endl << "Up" << endl;//key up
    break;
case 66:
    cout << endl << "Down" << endl;   // key down
    break;
case 67:
    cout << endl << "Right" << endl;  // key right
    break;
case 68:
    cout << endl << "Left" << endl;  // key left
    break;
}

Is there some error in my code which made me go back to my main method, or did it skip over some code? Is there a faster way to do this? I'm almost 100% sure that my other code doesn't have anything to do with this problem, because I isolated the code from be dependent on any other aspect of the program, and I kept having the same problem.

Again, I tried every method of getting the arrow key press that I could find, and I keep getting the same problem. If it matters, I'm on a Windows 8 Samsung ATIV Smart PC and using the keyboard dock.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

#include <conio.h>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

#define KEY_UP 72
#define KEY_DOWN 80
#define KEY_LEFT 75
#define KEY_RIGHT 77

int main()
{
    int c = 0;
    while(1)
    {
        c = 0;

        switch((c=getch())) {
        case KEY_UP:
            cout << endl << "Up" << endl;//key up
            break;
        case KEY_DOWN:
            cout << endl << "Down" << endl;   // key down
            break;
        case KEY_LEFT:
            cout << endl << "Left" << endl;  // key left
            break;
        case KEY_RIGHT:
            cout << endl << "Right" << endl;  // key right
            break;
        default:
            cout << endl << "null" << endl;  // not arrow
            break;
        }

    }

    return 0;
}

output like this:

Up

Down

Right

Left

Up

Left

Right

Right

Up

detected arrow key press!