Question

I am making a C application in Unix that uses raw tty input.

I am calling write() to characters on the display, but I want to manipulate the cursor:

ssize_t
write(int d, const void *buf, size_t nbytes);

I’ve noticed that if buf has the value 8 (I mean char tmp = 8, then passing &tmp), it will move the cursor/pointer backward on the screen.

I was wondering where I could find all the codes, for example, I wish to move the cursor forward but I cannot seem to find it via Google.

Is there a page that lists all the code for the write() function please?

Thank you very much,

Jary

Answer 1

8 is just the ascii code for backspace. You can type man ascii and look at all the values (the man page on my Ubuntu box has friendlier names for the values). If you want to do more complicated things you may want to look at a library like ncurses.