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curs_inch 3x 2024-04-20 ncurses 6.4 Library calls

curs_inch(3x)                    Library calls                   curs_inch(3x)

NAME

       inch, winch, mvinch, mvwinch - get a curses character from a window

SYNOPSIS

       #include <curses.h>

       chtype inch(void);
       chtype winch(WINDOW *win);

       chtype mvinch(int y, int x);
       chtype mvwinch(WINDOW *win, int y, int x);

DESCRIPTION

       These  routines  return  the  character, of type chtype, at the current
       position in the named window.  If  any  attributes  are  set  for  that
       position,  their  values  are OR'ed into the value returned.  Constants
       defined in <curses.h> can be used with the & (logical AND) operator  to
       extract the character or attributes alone.

Attributes

       The  following  bit  masks  may  be  AND-ed with characters returned by
       winch.

       Name           Description
       ------------------------------------------------------------------------
       A_CHARTEXT     Extract character
       A_ATTRIBUTES   Extract attributes
       A_COLOR        Extract color pair information

RETURN VALUE

       Functions prefixed with "mv" first perform cursor movement and fail  if
       the position (y, x) is outside the window boundaries.

       The  winch  function  does  not  return an error if the window contains
       characters larger than 8-bits (255).  Only the low-order 8 bits of  the
       character are used by winch.

NOTES

       Note that all of these routines may be macros.

PORTABILITY

       These functions are described in X/Open Curses, Issue 4.

       Very  old systems (before standardization) provide a different function
       with the same name:

       o   The winch function was part of the  original  BSD  curses  library,
           which   stored   a  7-bit  character  combined  with  the  standout
           attribute.

           In BSD curses, winch returned only the character  (as  an  integer)
           with the standout attribute removed.

       o   System  V  curses  added support for several video attributes which
           could be combined with characters in the window.

           Reflecting this improvement, the function was altered to return the
           character combined with all video attributes in a chtype value.

       X/Open Curses does not specify the size and layout of attributes, color
       and character values in chtype; it is  implementation-dependent.   This
       implementation  uses 8 bits for character values.  An application using
       more bits,  e.g.,  a  Unicode  value,  should  use  the  wide-character
       equivalents to these functions.