On 10/28/2016 11:03 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 1:54 AM, Dennis Lee Bieber
<wlfr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/QBasic/Advanced_Input
indicates that INKEY$ doesn't even test the keyboard for presses, but is
only retrieving the next item from the keyboard input /buffer/ (which that
article goes on to mention used to be part of a dedicated hardware chip,
but now is a software/interrupt maintained buffer).
True, but in practice, it's the same thing. The keyboard buffer ring
gets populated by the interrupt handler, and INKEY$ looks at the
buffer, sees if it's empty (return ""), and if not, consumes and
returns one key.
'ring bugger' implies a finite limit tot he size of the queue. Do
either of you know what it is?
And it defines the extended return value as the "scan code" for the
keyboard. Which would just be a number assigned to the key position, and
might (back in those days) have had different values going from machine to
machine. Most of the modifier keys (shift, control) in those days did not
produce their own codes.
If I were to write inkey() for my own use or as part of a tk console
module, I would stick with returning either the character or a mostly
machine and OS independent name.
--
Terry Jan Reedy
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