Curses and Ncurses or whatevs.

So I was wondering how to make slightly less wonky command line programs. Sometimes they aren’t. Like top or nano or vi and stuff.

I think the answer is curses,

I basically read this

https://docs.python.org/2/howto/curses.html

Here’s a short example program that I think sort of demonstrates enough to get you going.

Press q to quit

z, r, and p do stuff.

Very curious that you have to do this sequence of build up and tear down or else it freaks. Ctrl-c does exits nicely due to that bit of code about signals. Ctrl-c send SIGINT signal

import curses
stdscr = curses.initscr()
curses.start_color()
curses.noecho()
curses.cbreak()
stdscr.keypad(1)


import signal
import sys
def signal_handler(signal, frame):
   curses.nocbreak(); stdscr.keypad(0); curses.echo()
   curses.endwin()
   print('You pressed Ctrl+C!')
   sys.exit(0)
signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, signal_handler)

begin_x = 20; begin_y = 7
height = 5; width = 40
win = curses.newwin(height, width, begin_y, begin_x)

#curses.init_pair(1, curses.COLOR_RED, curses.COLOR_WHITE)

while 1:
    c = stdscr.getch()
    if c == ord('p'):
        stdscr.addstr("Pretty text", curses.color_pair(0))
        stdscr.refresh()
    elif c == ord('q'):
        break  # Exit the while()
    elif c == curses.KEY_HOME:
        x = y = 0
    elif c == ord('r'):
        stdscr.addstr(0, 0, "Current mode: Typing mode",
              curses.A_REVERSE)
        stdscr.refresh()
    elif c == ord('z'):
        stdscr.addstr(20, 20, "I AM YOUR GOD",
              curses.A_BLINK)
        stdscr.refresh()

curses.nocbreak(); stdscr.keypad(0); curses.echo()
curses.endwin()