Using another header for conio.h

I would like to write a C++ programme on Ubuntu, which reacts immediately to the input without pressing enter. (-> I cannot use the header #include <conio.h> due to the reason that I am working on an UNIX system)

For instance: I press on my keyboard the key "a", but instead of showing "a" in the terminal, the programme should show "p".

For the last two days, I tried to do this with the header #include <ncurses.h>. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

Therefore, I would like to ask for your request.

With conio.h it would be like this:

#include <iostream> 
#include <conio.h> 
#include <string> 
using namespace std;

int main(void) 
{
    char c;
    c = getch();

    while(true)
    {

        if(c=='a')
        {
        putch('p');
        }

        else
        {
        putch(c);
        }

    c = getch();

    }

  cin.sync();              
  cin.get(); 
}

Can you please simply post the working source code with #include <ncurses.h> instead of #include <conio.h>?

Thank you so much in advance!!!

With best regards

quark42

Thank you Paulo1205!!!!

Here is my final code without conio.h:

#include <iostream> 
#include <string> 
#include <unistd.h>  
#include <termios.h>
#include <ncurses.h>
using namespace std;

int my_getch(void){
  struct termios oldattr, newattr;
  unsigned char ch;
  int retcode;
  tcgetattr(STDIN_FILENO, &oldattr);
  newattr=oldattr;
  newattr.c_lflag &= ~(ICANON | ECHO);
  tcsetattr(STDIN_FILENO, TCSANOW, &newattr);
  retcode=read(STDIN_FILENO, &ch, 1);
  tcsetattr(STDIN_FILENO, TCSANOW, &oldattr);
  return retcode<=0? EOF: (int)ch;
}



int main(void) 
{
    char c;
    c = my_getch();

    while(true)
    {

        if(c=='a')
        {
        putchar('p'); fflush(stdout);
        }

        else
        {
        putchar(c); fflush(stdout);
        }

    c = my_getch();

    }

  cin.sync();              
  cin.get(); 
}

Solution

If all you want is a quick replacement for the old ConIO getch(), the following code is enough.

int my_getch(void){
  struct termios oldattr, newattr;
  unsigned char ch;
  int retcode;
  tcgetattr(STDIN_FILENO, &oldattr);
  newattr=oldattr;
  newattr.c_lflag &= ~(ICANON | ECHO);
  tcsetattr(STDIN_FILENO, TCSANOW, &newattr);
  retcode=read(STDIN_FILENO, &ch, 1);
  tcsetattr(STDIN_FILENO, TCSANOW, &oldattr);
  return retcode<=0? EOF: (int)ch;
}

However, note that old DOS ConIO is a stripped-down version of UNIX Curses package, which provides everything you need for text terminal screen operations.

EDIT: Curses is most certainly the way to go, anyway. If you ever want to deal with arrow or function keys, without bothering with knowing the escape sequeneces associated with them for each type of terminal, you'd rather learn Curses and its own version of getch().

Also, if you think you'll ever need support for characters out of ASCII range with UTF-8 or any other multibyte representation, you're better-off using ncursesw library's function get_wch() and its sisters.