This weekend I decided to do a little unmanaged C++.
My biggest take-away was that I learned that unmanaged (aka Win32) C++ is really, really hard and obtuse. As a C# guy (who used to be a VB6 programmer), I don't think that I appreciated how easy C# and VB6 are to work with.
Here are two things that I tried to do that were hard to figure out: Read a single character from the console and read a line from the console. Reading a single character is helpful for writing a "press any key to continue..." feature. Reading a line from the console is helpful for -- well -- reading a line of input from the user.
To read a single character from the console:
- Open up your .cpp file
- Add the following line somewhere near the top of the file:
#include "conio.h" - Read the single character with this line:
int iKeyPress = _getch();
To read a line from the console:
- Open up your .cpp file
- Add the following lines somewhere near the top of the file:
#include <iostream>
#include <string> - Read the line from the console:
string message;
getline(cin, message, '\n');
If you want to get really creative, you can even prompt the user for what you want to do by using "printf" to put a message onto the console.
printf("Type in your name then press ENTER: ");
string message;
getline(cin, message, '\n');
-Ben
posted @ Sunday, June 22, 2008 11:08 AM