Where can I find a complete reference of the ncurses C API?

Question

Where can I find a complete reference of the ncurses C API?

Solution 1

I found this question a while back, but none of the answers so far answer the original question. The complete freely available API reference is available through the . . .

NCURSES MAN PAGES

Solution 2

The documentation that comes with the library actually isn't that bad.

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/

Solution 3

You can buy this book. I have it and recommend: John Strang, Programming with curses, O'Reilly, ISBN 0-937175-02-1

The best online source information: http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-intro.html

I learned a lot about ncurses reading the minicom source code and the iptraf linux network monitor.

Solution 4

I've found the book "Programmer's Guide to nCurses" (Dan Gookin, published by Wiley) invaluable as it includes both tutorial and an impressive reference to the API.

There's also the O'Reilly Nutshell guide "Programming with Curses" which isn't too bad.

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Comments

[wnoise]

@MestreLion: % tar tvfz ncurses-5.9.tar.gz | grep HOWTO -rw-r--r-- tom/wheel 242426 2005-06-21 14:50 ncurses-5.9/doc/html/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.html

[MestreLion]

I'm sorry, I did not realize tldp.org copied the official HOWTO. Still, it should probably be better to point to the upstream website: invisible-island.net/ncurses/howto/… .

[MestreLion]

That online guide is indeed an amazing resource. Just be aware that ncurses authors placed it in "Technically obsolete, but often cited" category. The guide cited by @wnoise is indicated as current reference.

[Geoff Gustafson]

sorry, but the word freely doesn't appear at all in the original question..

[learnvst]

You what? free·ly ˈfrēlē adverb not under the control of another; as one wishes. "I roamed freely" without restriction or interference. "air can freely circulate"

[Nic]

@VP. What? How does that matter? That's like someone giving an answer that says, "This uses the strategy programming pattern". It's not an invalid answer because the question never mentioned the strategy pattern.

[Alan Corey]

It may not come with it, in Raspbian there's ncurses-doc and ncurses-examples as separate packages to install. I didn't even have an ncurses man page until that.