curs_inch(3X)                                                    curs_inch(3X)

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
       curses(3X)
            gives an overview of the WINDOW and chtype data types.

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

       curs_in_wch(3X)
            describes comparable functions for the wide-character (ncursesw)
            library.

                                                                 curs_inch(3X)