On 8 Oct 2005, at 22:45, Dennis Crawley wrote:I'm changing old code =20
in favor to WinAPIs.
> I'm taking a "C" course and the professor doesn=92t like my UART =20
> routines
> because they "touch" the hardware directly. :)
> For example, we have to use:
>   CreateFile, WriteFile, ReadFile
>   from windows.h

That's fair enough - direct access to hardware devices won't work in =20
any operating system that makes a distinction between user mode code =20
and kernel mode code - generally speaking only kernel code will be =20
able to touch the hardware directly. Direct hardware access will also =20
mean your program would fail with, for example, a USB to serial =20
converter instead of a real serial port.

> They say is in favor of portability (I assume MS portability and =20
> something
> to do with permissions), anyway I'm learning a lot. But I got stuck =20
> in a
> terminal program. I hope I can use kbhit. Forgot to mention this is a
> console32 application.

I'm not 100% certain about the history of kbhit() but it was there in =20
the DOS days and if it's still there for XP I think it's reasonable =20
to assume it's been there through all the intermediate operating =20
systems - it's not the kind of function they'd re-introduce just for XP.

I've just had a quick Google. I think this page is useful:
  http://lyxus.net/rw

Unfortunately it doesn't display in Safari (nice one MS :) but from =20
what I can see in Google's synopsis it implies that kbhit() has =20
always been available but that they're now deprecating it in favour =20
of _kbhit() (with an underscore).

--=20
Andy Armstrong, hexten.net


--=20
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