Is it possible to exit a C console application without threads at any time by pressing a key?

Question

Let's suppose I'm in a while (1) loop calculating something, would it be possible to quit the whole application by pressing a certain key?

It's a C console application without threads.

I'm pretty sure it's not possible, but I'm a newbie so hey. I can only imagine beeing forced to press a key by some function like _getch() or similar. But then you have to wait until the user presses the key and the calculation cannot run meanwhile.

Thanks for the link, I apologise for posing the question again, but it was not suggest when I posted it. — defoe, Jan 16 '14 at 16:01
@defoe that's OK. Sometimes it can be hard to find the right search words. — Bart Friederichs, Jan 16 '14 at 16:02
Set up your program with an event loop and then use non-blocking input (and non-blocking calls in general). This way makes it so you don't need OS threads — Brandin, Jan 16 '14 at 16:53

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 16 '14 at 15:57

1

You could do that by using C "signals".

This is not really difficult to use. Take a look at this wikipedia page. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_signal_handling

answered Jan 16 '14 at 15:57

Axel Borja

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score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 16 '14 at 16:01

On Windows systems, there's kbhit() function that is nonblocking and returns true when any key is pressed. So, you could change while(1) to while(!kbhit()), or you could if(kbhit()) c = getch() to read the char without waiting. But this is very crude solution, really..

Is it possible to exit a C console application without threads at any time by pressing a key?

2 Answers2