https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/
curs_get_wch(3x) Library calls curs_get_wch(3x)
get_wch, wget_wch, mvget_wch, mvwget_wch, unget_wch - get (or push
back) a wide character from curses terminal keyboard buffer
#include <curses.h>
int get_wch(wint_t * wch);
int wget_wch(WINDOW * win, wint_t * wch);
int mvget_wch(int y, int x, wint_t * wch);
int mvwget_wch(WINDOW * win, int y, int x, wint_t * wch);
int unget_wch(const wchar_t wc);
wget_wch gathers a key event from the terminal keyboard associated with
a curses window win, returning OK if a wide character is read,
KEY_CODE_YES if a function key is read, and ERR if no key event is
available. ncurses(3x) describes the variants of this function.
When input is pending, wget_wch stores an integer identifying the key
event in wch; for alphanumeric and punctuation keys, this value
corresponds to the character encoding used by the terminal. Use of the
control key as a modifier, by holding it down while pressing and
releasing another key, often results in a distinct code. The behavior
of other keys depends on whether win is in keypad mode; see subsections
"Keypad Mode" and "Predefined Key Codes" in getch(3x).
If no input is pending, then if the no-delay flag is set in the window
(see nodelay(3x)), the function returns ERR; otherwise, curses waits
until the terminal has input. If cbreak(3x) or raw(3x) has been
called, this happens after one character is read. If nocbreak(3x) or
noraw(3x) has been called, it occurs when the next newline is read.
(Because the terminal's canonical or "cooked" mode is line-buffered,
multiple wget_wch calls may then be necessary to empty the input
queue.) If halfdelay(3x) has been called, curses waits until input is
available or the specified delay elapses.
If echo(3x) has been called, and the window is not a pad, curses writes
the wide character from the input queue to the window (at the cursor
position) per the following rules.
o If the wide character matches the terminal's erase character (see
erasewchar(3x)), the cursor moves leftward one position and the new
position is erased as if wmove(3x) and then wdelch(3x) were called.
When the window's keypad mode is enabled (see below), KEY_LEFT and
KEY_BACKSPACE are handled the same way.
o curses writes any other wide character to the window, as with
wecho_wchar(3x).
o If the window win has been moved or modified since the last call to
wrefresh(3x), curses calls wrefresh on it.
If the wide character is a carriage return and nl(3x) has been called,
wget_wch stores the wide character code for line feed in wch instead.
unget_wch places wc into the input queue to be retrieved by the next
call to wget_wch. A single input queue serves all windows associated
with the screen.
wget_wch returns OK when it reads a wide character, KEY_CODE_YES when
it reads a function key code, and ERR on failure. wget_wch fails if
its timeout expires without any data arriving, which cannot happen if
nodelay(3x) is in effect on the window.
In ncurses, wget_wch also fails if
o the curses screen has not been initialized,
o (for functions taking a WINDOW pointer argument) win is a null
pointer, or
o execution was interrupted by a signal, in which case errno is set
to EINTR.
Functions prefixed with "mv" first perform cursor movement and fail if
the position (y, x) is outside the window boundaries.
unget_wch returns OK on success and ERR on failure. In ncurses,
unget_wch fails if
o the curses screen has not been initialized, or
o there is no more room in the input queue.
See the "NOTES" section of wgetch(3x).
All of these functions except wget_wch and unget_wch may be implemented
as macros.
Unlike wgetch(3x), wget_wch stores the value of the input character in
an additional wch parameter instead of the return value.
Unlike ungetch, unget_wch cannot distinguish function key codes from
conventional character codes. An application can overcome this
limitation by pushing function key codes with ungetch and subsequently
checking the return value of wget_wch for a match with KEY_CODE_YES.
See the "EXTENSIONS" section of wgetch(3x).
Applications employing ncurses extensions should condition their use on
the visibility of the NCURSES_VERSION preprocessor macro.
X/Open Curses Issue 4 describes these functions. It specifies no error
conditions for them.
See the "PORTABILITY" section of wgetch(3x) regarding the interaction
of wget_wch with signal handlers.
X/Open Curses Issue 4 (1995) initially specified these functions. The
System V Interface Definition Version 4 of the same year specified
functions named wgetwch (with its variants) ungetwch. These were later
additions to SVr4.x, not appearing in the first SVr4 (1989). They
differ from X/Open's later wget_wch and unget_wch in that wgetwch takes
no wch argument, but returns the (wide) key code as an int (with no
provision for distinguishing a character code from a function key
code); and ungetwch takes a non-const int argument.
curs_getch(3x) describes comparable functions of the ncurses library in
its non-wide-character configuration.
curses(3x), curs_add_wch(3x), curs_inopts(3x), curs_move(3x),
curs_refresh(3x)
ncurses 6.5 2025-04-05 curs_get_wch(3x)