Getchar w/wout echo

[Dave Hammond]

Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Re: Echoing chars and input functions
References: <8808160751.aa03016 at SMOKE.BRL.MIL> <5940003 at hpcupt1.HP.COM>
Reply-To: daveh at marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond)

In article <5940003 at hpcupt1.HP.COM> williamo at hpcupt1.HP.COM (William O'Saughnessy) writes:
>
>OK, what is the proper and portable way to get a character from stdin
>without having it echoed to the screen?!!!!

I wonder what makes this such a misunderstood and flammable topic.

Is it such a problem to consider things such as echo, line editing
and other terminal management tasks be the domain of the operating system,
(and as such, machine-dependent) ?

Isn't ioctl(), stty(), or fcntl() [or similar device management routine] in
the same manual as getchar() [no flames about different volumes, please :-)] ?

>Basic may have C beat here it defines the way with INKEY but there 
>appears to be no machine independent way of doing it in C!

I haven't got much Basic experience, but suspect that if the Basic INKEY
function is one which solicits raw (non echoed, key-at-a-time) keyboard input,
there is one which will solicite cooked (echoed, editable, line-at-a-time)
input as well.