Is it possible to exit a C console application without threads at any time by pressing a key? [duplicate]

Question

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C non-blocking keyboard input (11 answers)

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Let's suppose I'm in a while (1) loop calculating something, would it be possible to quit the whole application by pressing a certain key?

It's a C console application without threads.

I'm pretty sure it's not possible, but I'm a newbie so hey. I can only imagine beeing forced to press a key by some function like _getch() or similar. But then you have to wait until the user presses the key and the calculation cannot run meanwhile.

Answer 1

On Windows systems, there's kbhit() function that is nonblocking and returns true when any key is pressed. So, you could change while(1) to while(!kbhit()), or you could if(kbhit()) c = getch() to read the char without waiting. But this is very crude solution, really..

Answer 2

You could do that by using C "signals".

This is not really difficult to use. Take a look at this wikipedia page. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_signal_handling