Welcome to the series of Ncurses library in C++. In this, you will learn basics and some tidbits of ncurses.
NCurses is a programming library that provides an application programming interface that allows the programmer to write text-based user interfaces in a terminal independent manner.
To use ncurses we use ncurses.h
header
#include <ncurses.h>
Some functions that must be used in all ncurses
- initscr()
- initializes screen
- sets up memory and clean the screen
- refresh()
- refreshes the screen to match what's in the memory on the screen
- endwin()
- deallocates memory and ends ncurses
- getch()
- waits for user input
- returns the ASCII value of that key
To compile we must link the libncurses while compilation.
$ g++ <program file> -lncurses -o <output file name>
An obligatory hello-world
program in ncurses
#include <ncurses.h>
using namespace std;
int main(int argc, char ** argv)
{
// init screen and sets up screen
initscr();
// print to screen
printw("Hello World");
// refreshes the screen
refresh();
// pause the screen output
getch();
// deallocates memory and ends ncurses
endwin();
return 0;
}
Before using ncurses make sure it's installed in your system
Programs using NCurses
Here are some tools and IDE using ncurses library
- HTop
- GNU Nano Text Editor
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