# curs_inch 3x 2024-04-20 ncurses 6.4 Library calls

    curs_inch(3x)                    Library calls                   curs_inch(3x)

## NAME

           inch, winch, mvinch, mvwinch - get a curses character from a window

## SYNOPSIS

           #include <curses.h>

           chtype inch(void);
           chtype winch(WINDOW *win);

           chtype mvinch(int y, int x);
           chtype mvwinch(WINDOW *win, int y, int x);

## DESCRIPTION

           These  routines  return  the  character, of type chtype, at the current
           position in the named window.  If  any  attributes  are  set  for  that
           position,  their  values  are OR'ed into the value returned.  Constants
           defined in <curses.h> can be used with the & (logical AND) operator  to
           extract the character or attributes alone.

### Attributes

           The  following  bit  masks  may  be  AND-ed with characters returned by
           winch.

           Name           Description
           ------------------------------------------------------------------------
           A_CHARTEXT     Extract character
           A_ATTRIBUTES   Extract attributes
           A_COLOR        Extract color pair information

## RETURN VALUE

           Functions prefixed with "mv" first perform cursor movement and fail  if
           the position (y, x) is outside the window boundaries.

           The  winch  function  does  not  return an error if the window contains
           characters larger than 8-bits (255).  Only the low-order 8 bits of  the
           character are used by winch.

## NOTES

           Note that all of these routines may be macros.

## PORTABILITY

           These functions are described in X/Open Curses, Issue 4.

           Very  old systems (before standardization) provide a different function
           with the same name:

           o   The winch function was part of the  original  BSD  curses  library,
               which   stored   a  7-bit  character  combined  with  the  standout
               attribute.

               In BSD curses, winch returned only the character  (as  an  integer)
               with the standout attribute removed.

           o   System  V  curses  added support for several video attributes which
               could be combined with characters in the window.

               Reflecting this improvement, the function was altered to return the
               character combined with all video attributes in a chtype value.

           X/Open Curses does not specify the size and layout of attributes, color
           and character values in chtype; it is  implementation-dependent.   This
           implementation  uses 8 bits for character values.  An application using
           more bits,  e.g.,  a  Unicode  value,  should  use  the  wide-character
           equivalents to these functions.

## SEE ALSO

           curs_in_wch(3x)  describes  comparable functions of the ncurses library
           in its wide-character configuration (ncursesw).

           curses(3x), curs_instr(3x)

    ncurses 6.4                       2024-04-20                     curs_inch(3x)