Ncurses no-wrap mode when adding strings to window

Question

I'm adding strings to a window, with waddwstr() function, one line after other, in consecutive rows. I don't want ncurses to automatically wrap lines for me – I'm overwriting them with consecutive calls to waddwstr() and sometimes tail of previous line is left displaying. Can ncurses just stop when right edge of window is reached?

Answer 1

The non-wrapping functions have "ch" in their name, e.g., wadd_wchstr.

The same is true of the non-wide interfaces waddstr versus waddchstr.

However, the wrapping/non-wrapping functions differ by more than that. They use different parameter types. The wrapping functions rely upon the video attributes set via wattr_set, etc., while the non-wrapping functions combine the video-attributes with the character data:

• waddstr and waddchstr use char* and chtype* parameters, respectively
• waddwstr and wadd_chstr use wchar_t* and cchar_t* parameters.

Converting between the two forms can be a nuisance, because X/Open, etc., did not define functions for doing the conversion.

The manual page for bkgd describes how these video attributes are combined with the background character to obtain the actual display.