But it should work kind of like this with most unix-like OS. I don't know how Vinay knows you are using Mac OS X. But I am not an expert, so please be careful. Inspired by Vinay I wrote something that works for me and I sort of understand. I looked into what you are trying to achieve, because I remember I wanted to do the same thing. Plus, as we are talking about a single function, why do you need C++ for this ('C with classes')? As I pointed out, you can write in C++ and access this functionality easily, and your application's users are unlikely to care how you implemented it. All mainstream platforms are implemented with C interfaces (even if internal implementation is using C++) so your talk of 'legacy' seems out of place.

A big reason for C++'s success is interoperability with C. Also, re 'cross-platform': With this implementation of kbhit() you can have the same functionality in a C++ program on Linux/Unix/OS X/Windows - which other platforms might you be referring to?įurther update for C++ applications do not live in a hermetically sealed C++ environment.

It prompts you for a keypress, and exits when you hit a key (not limited to Enter or printable - please elaborate what you mean by 'detailed canonical answer' and 'all the concerns'. This gist can be saved as kbhit.c and compiled on both Linux and OS X with gcc -o kbhit kbhit.c Update: The above function works on OS X (at least, on OS X 10.5.8 - Leopard, so I would expect it to work on more recent versions of OS X). If you're on Linux, you can implement kbhit thus ( source): #include įcntl(STDIN_FILENO, F_SETFL, oldf | O_NONBLOCK) If you're on Windows, you can use kbhit() which is part of the Microsoft run-time library.

Newt professional 2.5 license key