NAME

       inch, winch, mvinch, mvwinch - get a character and attributes from a curses window

SYNOPSIS

       #include <curses.h>

       chtype inch(void);
       chtype winch(WINDOW *win);

       chtype mvinch(int y, int x);
       chtype mvwinch(WINDOW *win, int y, int x);

DESCRIPTION

       These  routines return the character, of type chtype, at the current position in the named
       window.  If any attributes are set for that position, their  values  are  OR'ed  into  the
       value  returned.   Constants  defined  in  <curses.h> can be used with the & (logical AND)
       operator to extract the character or attributes alone.

   Attributes
       The following bit-masks may be AND-ed with characters returned by winch.

       A_CHARTEXT     Bit-mask to extract character
       A_ATTRIBUTES   Bit-mask to extract attributes
       A_COLOR        Bit-mask to extract color-pair field information

RETURN VALUE

       Functions with a “mv” prefix first perform a cursor movement using wmove,  and  return  an
       error if the position is outside the window, or if the window pointer is null.

       The  winch function does not return an error if the window contains characters larger than
       8-bits (255).  Only the low-order 8 bits of the character are used by winch.

NOTES

       Note that all of these routines may be macros.

PORTABILITY

       These functions are described in the XSI Curses standard, Issue 4.

       Very old systems (before standardization) provide a different function with the same name:

       •   The winch function was part of the original BSD curses library, which stored  a  7-bit
           character combined with the standout attribute.

           In  BSD  curses,  winch  returned only the character (as an integer) with the standout
           attribute removed.

       •   System V curses added support for several video attributes  which  could  be  combined
           with characters in the window.

           Reflecting this improvement, the function was altered to return the character combined
           with all video attributes in a chtype value.

       X/Open Curses does not specify the size and layout  of  attributes,  color  and  character
       values  in  chtype;  it  is implementation-dependent.  This implementation uses 8 bits for
       character values.  An application using more bits, e.g., a Unicode value, should  use  the
       wide-character equivalents to these functions.

SEE ALSO

       ncurses(3NCURSES)
            gives an overview of the WINDOW and chtype data types.

       attr(3NCURSES)
            goes  into  more detail, pointing out portability problems and constraints on the use
            of chtype for returning window information.

       in_wch(3NCURSES)
            describes comparable functions for the wide-character (ncursesw) library.

                                                                                   inch(3NCURSES)