Getting arrow keys from cin

c++ cin
Baruch picture Baruch · Dec 8, 2011 · Viewed 21.7k times · Source

I am sure this must have been asked before, but a quick search found nothing.

How can I get the arrow/direction keys with cin in c++?

Answer

Kerrek SB picture Kerrek SB · Dec 8, 2011

It has indeed been asked before, and the answer is that you cannot do it.

C++ has no concept of a keyboard or a console. It only knows of an opaque input data stream.

Your physical console preprocesses and buffers your keyboard activity and only sends cooked data to the program, usually line-by-line. In order to talk to the keyboard directly, you require a platform-specific terminal handling library.

On Linux, this is usually done with the ncurses or termcap/terminfo libraries. On Windows you can use pdcurses, or perhaps the Windows API (though I'm not familiar with that aspect).

Graphic-application frameworks such as SDL, Allegro, Irrlicht or Ogre3D come with full keyboard and mouse handling, too.

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