What can I use to allow a user to just press any key to continue, without having to follow up with hitting enter.

I know I can do getchar() or cin.get(), but those require the enter key be pressed. I also know about getch(), but that it's not ANSI. Also there's system(PAUSE), but heard that comes with a lot of overhead.

I'd like this to work mainly as a C environment as opposed to a C++ environment (if that makes sense). Any suggestions? Thanks

Easiest way to this I think would be using the ncurses library if you are working in Linux, and I think there is some function under Windows that can accomplish this task too.

I'm thinking out aloud here, but it may be possible to only use the stdio.h library. I would try opening up the stdin stream as a file, and use fseek to point to the end of the stream, and record the position of the pointer. Then print your message and update/check the position of the file pointer again. If it changes then you know the user has typed something in.

EDIT: Nevermind, I realized that this won't work. You still need scanf to update the stdin stream.

So I thought about this a little it more this morning, and I don't think there is a portable way to do this. Input using the standard io library has to be buffered, so the use of the cartridge return is required.

If you want to achieve this you'll have to play with the keyboard directly. Under Windows this would mean installing a hook to capture keyboard events. Under Linux you can simply use ncurses or use a raw terminal. Or you could just continue using solutions like getch() or kbhit(). Regardless, none of these solutions are standard.

Sorry I couldn't be more help.

Well thanks for putting on your thinking cap for this one. After further research it would seem you're right. About the only way to do it with things that already exist are the methods I mentioned. Oh well, printing a message that says "...Enter key..." instead of "...Any Key..." probably wouldn't be too big a deal anyway. I would hope people don't get uppity about "ZOMG I have to hit a specific key nooooo!!" Thanks again for your input.

Where does one find the "any" key? I do not see this one on my keyboard.

Wayne wrote:

Where does one find the "any" key? I do not see this one on my keyboard.

it's between the "F" and the "G" keys. You have to pry up the keys to access it.