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Sortix nightly manual

This manual documents Sortix nightly, a development build that has not been officially released. You can instead view this document in the latest official manual.

NAME

curses_keyname, keyname — curses report key name routine

LIBRARY

Curses Library (libcurses, -lcurses)

SYNOPSIS

#include <curses.h>
char *
keyname(int key);

DESCRIPTION

The function keyname() generates a character string containing a description of the key specified in key.
The string is formatted according to the following table:
Description Key range String format
Control character 0 - 31 ^X
Visible character 32 - 126 X
Delete character 127 ^?
Meta + control character 128 - 158 M-^X
Meta + visible character 159 - 254 M-X
Meta + delete character 255 M-^?
Named key KEY_MIN - KEY_MAX KEY_EXIT
Unknown key -1

SEE ALSO

curses_input(3)

NOTE

The return value of keyname() is a static buffer, which will be overwritten on a subsequent call.

STANDARDS

The NetBSD Curses library complies with the X/Open Curses specification, part of the Single Unix Specification.

HISTORY

These functions first appeared in NetBSD 2.0.
Copyright 2011-2025 Jonas 'Sortie' Termansen and contributors.
Sortix's source code is free software under the ISC license.
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