ncurseskirjaston

The ncurses library, often referred to as "ncurses," is a programming library that provides an interface to the X/Open Portability Operating System Interface (POSIX)curses standard for developing text-based user interfaces (TUIs). It allows programmers to control the terminal screen, drawing text, characters, and basic shapes in specific locations, and handling user input. This enables the creation of applications that behave much like graphical user interfaces but run entirely within a text-based terminal environment.

Key functionalities of ncurses include cursor positioning, character attribute manipulation (such as color, bold, or underline), clearing the screen, and reading keyboard input without requiring the user to press Enter. It abstracts away the differences between various terminal types, ensuring that applications written using ncurses can run on a wide range of systems. This portability is a significant advantage for developers.

Common uses for ncurses include creating interactive command-line tools, text editors like `vim` and `emacs` in their terminal modes, system administration utilities, and games that don't require a graphical display. The library is widely available on Unix-like operating systems and is often used in C and C++ programming, though bindings exist for many other languages. The name "ncurses" itself is a contraction of "new curses," indicating its development as a successor to the original curses library.