https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/
curs_getstr(3x) Library calls curs_getstr(3x)
getstr, getnstr, wgetstr, wgetnstr, mvgetstr, mvgetnstr, mvwgetstr,
mvwgetnstr - read a character string from curses terminal keyboard
#include <curses.h>
int getstr(char * str);
int wgetstr(WINDOW * win, char * str);
int mvgetstr(int y, int x, char * str);
int mvwgetstr(WINDOW * win, int y, int x, char * str);
int getnstr(char * str, int n);
int wgetnstr(WINDOW * win, char * str, int n);
int mvgetnstr(int y, int x, char * str, int n);
int mvwgetnstr(WINDOW * win, int y, int x, char * str,
int n);
wgetstr populates a user-supplied string buffer str by repeatedly
calling wgetch(3x) with the win argument until a line feed or carriage
return character is input. The function
o does not copy the terminating character to str;
o always terminates str with a null character;
o interprets the screen's erase and kill characters (see
erasechar(3x) and killchar(3x));
o recognizes function keys only if the screen's keypad option is
enabled (see keypad(3x));
o treats the function keys KEY_LEFT and KEY_BACKSPACE the same as the
erase character; and
o discards function key inputs other than those treated as the erase
or kill characters, calling beep(3x).
If any characters have been written to the input buffer, the erase
character replaces the character at the current position in the buffer
with a null character, then decrements the position by one; the kill
character does the same repeatedly, backtracking to the beginning of
the buffer.
If the screen's echo option is enabled (see echo(3x)), wgetstr updates
win with waddch(3x). Further,
o the erase character and its function key synonyms move the cursor
to the left (if not already where it was located when wgetstr was
called) and
o the kill character returns the cursor to where it was located when
wgetstr was called.
wgetnstr is similar, but reads at most n characters, aiding the
application to avoid overrunning the buffer to which str points.
curses ignores an attempt to input more than n characters (other than
the terminating line feed or carriage return), calling beep(3x). If n
is negative, wgetn_wstr reads up to LINE_MAX characters (see
sysconf(3)).
ncurses(3x) describes the variants of these functions.
These functions return OK on success and ERR on failure.
In ncurses, these functions fail if
o the curses screen has not been initialized,
o (for functions taking a WINDOW pointer argument) win is a null
pointer,
o str is a null pointer, or
o an internal wgetch(3x) call fails.
Further, in ncurses, these functions return KEY_RESIZE if a SIGWINCH
event interrupts the function.
Functions prefixed with "mv" first perform cursor movement and fail if
the position (y, x) is outside the window boundaries.
All of these functions except wgetnstr may be implemented as macros.
Reading input that overruns the buffer pointed to by str causes
undefined results. Use the n-infixed functions, and allocate
sufficient storage for str -- at least n+1 times sizeof(char).
While these functions conceptually implement a series of calls to
wgetch, they also temporarily change properties of the curses screen to
permit simple editing of the input buffer. Each function saves the
screen's state, calls nl(3x), and, if the screen was in canonical
("cooked") mode, cbreak(3x). Before returning, it restores the saved
screen state. Other implementations differ in detail, affecting which
control characters they can accept in the buffer; see section
"PORTABILITY" below.
getnstr, wgetnstr, mvgetnstr, and mvwgetnstr's handing of negative n
values is an ncurses extension.
The return value KEY_RESIZE is an ncurses extension.
Applications employing ncurses extensions should condition their use on
the visibility of the NCURSES_VERSION preprocessor macro.
X/Open Curses Issue 4 describes these functions. It specifies no error
conditions for them, but indicates that wgetnstr and its variants read
"the entire multi-byte sequence associated with a character" and "fail"
if n and str together do not describe a buffer "large enough to contain
any complete characters". In ncurses, however, wgetch reads only
single-byte characters, so this scenario does not arise.
SVr4 describes a successful return value only as "an integer value
other than ERR".
SVr3 and early SVr4 curses implementations did not reject function
keys; the SVr4 documentation asserted that, like the screen's erase and
kill characters, they were
interpreted, as well as any special keys (such as function keys,
"home" key, "clear" key, etc.)
without further detail. It lied. The "character" value appended to
the string by those implementations was predictable but not useful --
being, in fact, the low-order eight bits of the key code's KEY_
constant value. (The same language, unchanged except for styling,
survived into X/Open Curses Issue 4, Version 2 but disappeared from
Issue 7.)
A draft of X/Open Curses Issue 5 (which never saw final release) stated
that these functions "read at most n bytes" but did not state whether
the terminating null character counted toward that limit. X/Open
Curses Issue 7 changed that to say they "read at most n-1 bytes" to
allow for the terminating null character. As of 2018, some
implementations count it, some do not.
o ncurses 6.1 and PDCurses do not count the null character toward the
limit, while Solaris and NetBSD curses do.
o Solaris xcurses offers both behaviors: its wide-character
wgetn_wstr reserves room for a wide null character, but its non-
wide wgetnstr does not consistently count a null character toward
the limit.
X/Open Curses does not specify what happens if the length n is
negative.
o ncurses 6.2 uses LINE_MAX or a larger (system-dependent) value
provided by sysconf(3). If neither LINE_MAX nor sysconf is
available, ncurses uses the POSIX minimum value for LINE_MAX
(2048). In either case, it reserves a byte for the terminating
null character.
o In SVr4 curses, a negative n tells wgetnstr to assume that the
caller's buffer is large enough to hold the result; that is, the
function then acts like wgetstr. X/Open Curses does not mention
this behavior (or anything related to nonpositive n values),
however most curses libraries implement it. Most implementations
nevertheless enforce an upper limit on the count of bytes they
write to the destination buffer str.
o BSD curses lacked wgetnstr, and its wgetstr wrote to str
unboundedly, as did that in SVr2.
o PDCurses, and SVr3 and later, and Solaris curses limit both
functions to writing 256 bytes. Other System V-based platforms
likely use the same limit.
o Solaris xcurses limits the write to LINE_MAX bytes (see
sysconf(3)).
o NetBSD 7 curses imposes no particular limit on the length of the
write, but does validate n to ensure that it is greater than zero.
A comment in NetBSD's source code asserts that SUSv2 specifies
this.
Implementations vary in their handling of input control characters.
o While they may enable the screen's echo option, some do not take it
out of raw mode, and may take cbreak mode into account when
deciding whether to handle echoing within wgetnstr or to rely on it
as a side effect of calling wgetch.
o Originally, ncurses, like its progenitor pcurses, had its wgetnstr
call noraw and cbreak before accepting input. That may have been
done to make function keys work; it is not necessary with modern
ncurses.
Since 1995, ncurses has provided handlers for SIGINTR and SIGQUIT
events, which are typically generated at the keyboard with ^C and
^\ respectively. In cbreak mode, those handlers catch a signal and
stop the program, whereas other implementations write those
characters into the buffer.
o Starting with ncurses 6.3 (2021), wgetnstr preserves raw mode if
the screen was already in that state, allowing one to enter the
characters the terminal interprets as interrupt and quit events
into the buffer, for better compatibility with SVr4 curses.
4BSD (1980) introduced wgetstr along with its variants.
SVr3.1 (1987) added wgetnstr, but none of its variants.
X/Open Curses Issue 4 (1995) specified getnstr, mvgetnstr, and
mvwgetnstr.
curs_get_wstr(3x) describes comparable functions of the ncurses library
in its wide-character configuration (ncursesw).
curses(3x), curs_addch(3x), curs_getch(3x), curs_inopts(3x),
curs_termattrs(3x),
ncurses 6.5 2025-07-05 curs_getstr(3x)