getch and arrow codes

Question

I'm writing a programm that's using getch() to scan for arrow keys. My code so far is:

switch(getch()) {
    case 65:    // key up
        break;
    case 66:    // key down
        break;
    case 67:    // key right
        break;
    case 68:    // key left
        break;
}

Problem is that when I press 'A', 'B', 'C' or 'D' the code will also executed, because 65 is the decimal code for 'A', etc...

Is there a way to check for an arrow key without call others?

Thanks!

Answer 1

By pressing one arrow key getch will push three values into the buffer:

• '\033'
• '['
• 'A', 'B', 'C' or 'D'

So the code will be something like this:

if (getch() == '\033') { // if the first value is esc
    getch(); // skip the [
    switch(getch()) { // the real value
        case 'A':
            // code for arrow up
            break;
        case 'B':
            // code for arrow down
            break;
        case 'C':
            // code for arrow right
            break;
        case 'D':
            // code for arrow left
            break;
    }
}

Answer 2

getch () function returns two keycodes for arrow keys (and some other special keys), as mentioned in the comment by FatalError. It returns either 0 (0x00) or 224 (0xE0) first, and then returns a code identifying the key that was pressed.

For the arrow keys, it returns 224 first followed by 72 (up), 80 (down), 75 (left) and 77 (right). If the num-pad arrow keys (with NumLock off) are pressed, getch () returns 0 first instead of 224.

Please note that getch () is not standardized in any way, and these codes might vary from compiler to compiler. These codes are returned by MinGW and Visual C++ on Windows.

A handy program to see the action of getch () for various keys is:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <conio.h>

int main ()
{
    int ch;

    while ((ch = _getch()) != 27) /* 27 = Esc key */
    {
        printf("%d", ch);
        if (ch == 0 || ch == 224)
            printf (", %d", _getch ()); 
        printf("\n");
    }

    printf("ESC %d\n", ch);

    return (0);
}

This works for MinGW and Visual C++. These compilers use the name _getch () instead of getch () to indicate that it is a non-standard function.

So, you may do something like:

ch = _getch ();
if (ch == 0 || ch == 224)
{
    switch (_getch ())
    {
        case 72:
            /* Code for up arrow handling */
            break;

        case 80:
            /* Code for down arrow handling */
            break;

        /* ... etc ... */
    }
}