CURSES: magic cookie glitch characters

[Dave Jenks]

In article <felps.658590420 at convex.convex.com> felps at convex.com (Robert Felps) writes:
>Can anyone shed some light on 'magic cookie glitch characters'?

A "magic cookie" is a byte location on a terminal screen which alters
the "current attribute[s]".

For example, to change from normal to reverse video, there would be a
byte on the screen which changes all subsequent bytes to be reverse.
To write something in that location on the screen would cancel the
reversal of the following characters.

The obvious bummer is that the entire screen cannot be used - screen/
display attributes take up space.  The *absolute worst* part is that
some terminals do it, and some don't, making tty-independent software
that much more of a pain.
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>>-@@-> Dave Jenks              {uunet | ucbvax!ucdavis}!csusac!jetfuel
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