Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!Kevin_P_McCarty
From: Kevin_P_McCarty@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: ReadKey like Function in C
Message-ID: <21371@cup.portal.com>
Date: 17 Aug 89 08:51:20 GMT
References: <148@trigon.UUCP> <225800206@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
  <1677@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <19095@mimsy.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 18

In <19095@mimsy.UUCP>, chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>What does `kbhit()' mean when stdin is a socket?  How about in a VMS
>batch job?

kbhit() in the absence of a keyboard owned by the process behaves
similarly to pod_bay_doors_open() in the absence of pod bay doors owned
by the process, namely, the behavior is undefined.  It is an error to
interrogate a device which does not exist.  kbhit() interrogates the
status of a device.  stdin is not a device.  kbhit() is in the same
class as left_mouse_button_pressed().  Neither has anything to do with C
language; neither belongs in a language standard; they are idiosyncratic
to hardware.

>What does getch() do at end of file?

Why, it returns EOF.  getch() returns an int, same as getchar().

Kevin McCarty