Getting input from console without cin?

Question

I'm trying to make a little console program that will basically be console pong. So right now I have this:

int main()
{
    while(1)
    {
        clearScreen();
        restThread(100);
    }
    return 0;
}

The only input I need to poll is if the user has pressed the A or D key since the screen was cleared. I will also need to know when the key is released. I'm also trying to do this cross platform.

so really all I need is like an if(keyWasDown('a')) {} sort of function.

Thanks

Answer 1

Maybe you want kbhit (non-blocking) or getch (blocking), both from <conio.h>. There's also getchar, from <stdio.h> or <cstdio>.

If you want the program to wait for a keyboard press, getch or getchar by themselves will do.

If you don't want the program to wait for a keyboard press, kbhit combined with either getch or getchar will suffice.

However, as GMan said, these methods are not really cross platform (if you never intend to try this on different platforms, that's moot, really). For console games, you might be interested looking into ncurses.