C: Terminating the program by pressing a key

Question

In C, I normally use the getch() function to wait for a key to be pressed and then end the program, but recently I read that since it's not a standard function, it's bad programming practice to use it.

So instead of the following:

int main() {
    dosomething();
    getch(); //wait for the user to see the results and press a key to end
    return 0;
}

What should I do to replace the getch ?

Answer 1

getc(stdin); is portable in this sense

Answer 2

Using a non-standard I/O function isn't bad practice per se; it becomes an issue if you intend to port this code to a different platform that doesn't support getch().

The problem is, there are no standard library functions that detect individual keystrokes (getchar() and fgetc() are buffered and require you to hit Enter before they return); you're going to have to use something non-standard to do that. If you only intend for this code to run on this specific platform, use getch() if that's what you need and just remember that this solution won't necessarily apply to other platforms. If you intend to port this code to platforms that don't support getch(), isolate the system-specific call behind a wrapper function so that when you port the code, only the code inside the wrapper function needs to change.

int getKeystroke(void)
{
  /**
   * Put platform-specific call here
   */
  return getch();
}

int main(void)
{
  ... // do stuff here
  getKeystroke();
  return 0;
}