Win32 - read from stdin with timeout

Question

I\'m trying to do something which I think should be simple: do a blocking read from standard input, but timing out after a specified interval if no data is available.

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Answer 1

Using GetStdHandle + WaitForSingleObject works fine. But be sure to set the approriate flags and flush the console buffer as well before entering the loop.

In short (without error checks)

std::string inStr;
DWORD fdwMode, fdwOldMode;
HANDLE hStdIn = GetStdHandle(STD_INPUT_HANDLE);
GetConsoleMode(hStdIn, &fdwOldMode);
// disable mouse and window input
fdwMode = fdwOldMode ^ ENABLE_MOUSE_INPUT ^ ENABLE_WINDOW_INPUT;
SetConsoleMode(hStdIn, fdwMode);
// flush to remove existing events
FlushConsoleInputBuffer(hStdIn);
while (!abort)
{
    if (WaitForSingleObject(hStdIn, 100) == WAIT_OBJECT_0)
    {
         std::getline(std::cin, inStr);
    }
}
// restore console mode when exit
SetConsoleMode(hStdIn, fdwOldMode);