Question:

I'm trying to get a character from the keyboard using curses.h. This is my source (get_char_example.c):

#include <curses.h> #include <stdio.h> int main(void) { char ch; printf("Enter a character: "); ch = getch(); printf("\nIts ASCII code is %d\n", ch); return 0; }

I use the following command to compile:

gcc get_char_example.c -o get_char_example

And I get the following error:

/tmp/ccjaXwRU.o: In function `main':

get_char_example.c:(.text+0x1c): undefined reference to `stdscr' get_char_example.c:(.text+0x24): undefined reference to `wgetch' collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

using: gcc (GCC) 7.2.0 Arch Linux 4.13.9-1-ARCH

Thanks in advance!

It is a linker error (see <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1513417/why-is-curses-on-linux-giving-me-following-error" rel="nofollow">this</a>, nearly a duplicate). ncurses is generally known to <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config/" rel="nofollow">pkg-config</a> (which gives more dependencies, when required), so try to compile with:

gcc -Wall -Wextra -g \ $(pkg-config --cflags ncurses) \ get_char_example.c \ $(pkg-config --libs ncurses)

^{You want to <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Invoking-GCC.html" rel="nofollow">Invoke GCC</a> with all warnings and debug info; you would <a href="https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/" rel="nofollow">use GDB</a>, perhaps under emacs or with ddd, for debugging.}

Even better, use some <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build_automation" rel="nofollow">build automation</a> tool (like <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/make" rel="nofollow">make</a> or ninja). With <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/index.html" rel="nofollow">GNU make</a> take inspiration from <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/20146082/841108" rel="nofollow">this</a> to write your <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makefile" rel="nofollow">Makefile</a> (where <kbd>tab</kbd>-s are significant).

On my Debian Sid, pkg-config --cflags ncurses gives -D_GNU_SOURCE -D_DEFAULT_SOURCE and pkg-config --libs ncurses gives -lncurses -ltinfo, so simply linking with -lncurses is <em>not</em> enough (and that is why <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1513417/why-is-curses-on-linux-giving-me-following-error" rel="nofollow">this</a> is not exactly a duplicate today in November 2017; a few years ago linking with simply -lncurses was enough, today it is not).

Use pkg-config --list-all to find all the packages and libraries known to <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config/" rel="nofollow">pkg-config</a>; when developing <em>your</em> libraries consider also providing some .pc file for it.

BTW, your program should start by initializing with initscr and use printw; Read <a href="http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/" rel="nofollow">Ncurses-programming-HowTo</a> even if it is a bit old.

Notice also that using ASCII in the 21^st century is obsolete. <strong>Programs</strong> and computers <strong>use <a href="http://utf8everywhere.org/" rel="nofollow">UTF-8 everywhere</a></strong>, and this has profound consequences you should be aware of (since an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8" rel="nofollow">UTF-8</a> character can span <em>several</em> bytes). My French keyboard has keys for ², §, € and é (even with American keyboards your could paste them) and none of these are in ASCII. Consider also using some UTF-8 library like <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/libunistring/manual/libunistring.html" rel="nofollow">libunistring</a>.