C non-blocking keyboard input

Solution 1:

As already stated, you can use sigaction to trap ctrl-c, or select to trap any standard input.

Note however that with the latter method you also need to set the TTY so that it's in character-at-a-time rather than line-at-a-time mode. The latter is the default - if you type in a line of text it doesn't get sent to the running program's stdin until you press enter.

You'd need to use the tcsetattr() function to turn off ICANON mode, and probably also disable ECHO too. From memory, you also have to set the terminal back into ICANON mode when the program exits!

Just for completeness, here's some code I've just knocked up (nb: no error checking!) which sets up a Unix TTY and emulates the DOS <conio.h> functions kbhit() and getch():

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/select.h>
#include <termios.h>

struct termios orig_termios;

void reset_terminal_mode()
{
    tcsetattr(0, TCSANOW, &orig_termios);
}

void set_conio_terminal_mode()
{
    struct termios new_termios;

    /* take two copies - one for now, one for later */
    tcgetattr(0, &orig_termios);
    memcpy(&new_termios, &orig_termios, sizeof(new_termios));

    /* register cleanup handler, and set the new terminal mode */
    atexit(reset_terminal_mode);
    cfmakeraw(&new_termios);
    tcsetattr(0, TCSANOW, &new_termios);
}

int kbhit()
{
    struct timeval tv = { 0L, 0L };
    fd_set fds;
    FD_ZERO(&fds);
    FD_SET(0, &fds);
    return select(1, &fds, NULL, NULL, &tv) > 0;
}

int getch()
{
    int r;
    unsigned char c;
    if ((r = read(0, &c, sizeof(c))) < 0) {
        return r;
    } else {
        return c;
    }
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    set_conio_terminal_mode();

    while (!kbhit()) {
        /* do some work */
    }
    (void)getch(); /* consume the character */
}

Solution 2:

select() is a bit too low-level for convenience. I suggest you use the ncurses library to put the terminal in cbreak mode and delay mode, then call getch(), which will return ERR if no character is ready:

WINDOW *w = initscr();
cbreak();
nodelay(w, TRUE);

At that point you can call getch without blocking.

Solution 3:

On UNIX systems, you can use sigaction call to register a signal handler for SIGINT signal which represents the Control+C key sequence. The signal handler can set a flag which will be checked in the loop making it to break appropriately.