Some useful posters from Berkeley

Mildly entertaining extras

• get keyboard input without making the user hit enter
• change the colour of text and background on the terminal window
• figure out how big the terminal window currently is
• jump the cursor to a specific point in the window
• pause the program for a fixed number of seconds
• clear the screen

To include the set of functions in a program, just make sure you copy the effects.h file to the same directory as the rest of your code, and #include "effects.h" in your .C file.

The actual functions are:

• bool keyQuick(char &c);
  Returns true if the user has pressed a key (false otherwise) and returns the key in parameter c

• void sysPause(float t);
  Pauses the system for t seconds, where t can be between 0.05 and 1800

• void getTermSize(long &h, long &w);
  Gets the height and width of the terminal window (e.g. 24 characters high by 80 characters wide)

• void moveCursor(long row, long col);
  Moves the cursor to a specific row and column (1,1 is top left)

• void clear();
  Clears the screen and moves the cursor to the top left

• void chgText(Colour c);
  void chgBack(Colour c);
  Change the colour of the text or the background where the colours can be any of Black, Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, Purple, Pale, Grey or DefCol to restore all defaults

• void chgFormat(FormType t);
  Changes the display format (highlighting and other effects). The specified format can be any of the following: Clear, Bold, Underline, Faint, Negative, Normal, Alt, or DefForm to restore all defaults. (Normal and Alt toggle between the two terminal character fonts.)