How to distinguish arrow-key from escape character with getch in C?

missyT — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 13:27:09 GMT

I want to know weather an arrow key or the escape character has ben pressed. But in order to check which arrow key has been pressed I need to do multiple blocking getch-calls bc the arrow-key sequence is bigger than 1 char. This is a problem when I check for the escape char bc it only needs 1 char and this first char is identical to the one arrow returns. So I call the first getch which gets the escape character but afterwards I have to call getch two more times to check its not an arrow-key. Is there a way to know weather escape has been pressed without doing two more getch-calls afterwards to check for the arrow-keys <a href = "https://azar.pro"> Azar </a>?

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Re: How to distinguish arrow-key from escape character with getch in C?

Hubert-Dudek — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 11:59:11 GMT

getch () function returns two keycodes for arrow keys. Arrow put to getch '\033'

and '[' and letter from A to D (up, down, right, left) so code will be something like:

if (getch() == '\033')  { 
    getch(); // [ value
    switch(getch())
    { 
        case 'A':
            // your code
        case 'B':
            // your code
        case 'C':
            //your code
        case 'D':
            //your code
    }
}

topic How to distinguish arrow-key from escape character with getch in C? in Data Engineering

How to distinguish arrow-key from escape character with getch in C?

Re: How to distinguish arrow-key from escape character with getch in C?