Alternative function in iostream.h for getch() of conio.h?

Question

I\'m trying to hold the screen on my output using the header file , but I don\'t know any equivalent function to the getch() &

Answer 1

This is what I usually use:

#include<iostream>
...
std::getchar();

Answer 2

getch() and clrscr() will work with C++. Include conio.h

However, if you CANNOT (for some reason) include conio.h,

how about cin>>dummy_var with a display message asking the user to press enter?

Answer 3

I understand that this is an old question but I am going to answer nonetheless because people may be looking for an answer to a similar question.

conio.h is an (ancient) Windows and MS-DOS/PC-DOS C library that was, and still is used for very basic, bare-metal keyboard input and handling in a Windows/DOS environment.

Both getch() and clrscr() are non-standard additions by this header, and should be avoided when possible for the standard C functions. getch() can usually be replaced with scanf(), fread(), in C and std::cin and std::cin.get in C++. As for clrscr(), the closest you can get is:

for(int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
{
    printf("\n");
}

OR:

There is also ncurses.h on *nix environments. Here's a link to some info about that.

Answer 4

if you work on windows you can use system("pause"), this will give you "press any key to continue" message.

Answer 5

The platform-specific function getch() from conio.h has two special features:

• No echoing of characters.
• Unbuffered reading of characters.

The echoing is done by the terminal outside of the C/C++ environment. It can only be controlled by manipulating the terminal. Also, it is nearly impossible to get unbuffered I/O with the iostream.h header.

Therefore it is not possible to get anywhere near getch() using iostream.h alone.

(There are plenty of getch()implementations around, e.g. using termios.h to disable echoing.)

Answer 6

just use cin.get();