:mod:`curses` --- Terminal handling for character-cell displays

The :mod:`curses` module provides an interface to the curses library, the de-facto standard for portable advanced terminal handling.

While curses is most widely used in the Unix environment, versions are available for DOS, OS/2, and possibly other systems as well. This extension module is designed to match the API of ncurses, an open-source curses library hosted on Linux and the BSD variants of Unix.

import locale
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')
code = locale.getpreferredencoding()

Functions

The module :mod:`curses` defines the following exception:

The module :mod:`curses` defines the following functions:

Window Objects

Window objects, as returned by :func:`initscr` and :func:`newwin` above, have the following methods:

Constants

The :mod:`curses` module defines the following data members:

Several constants are available to specify character cell attributes:

Keys are referred to by integer constants with names starting with KEY_. The exact keycaps available are system dependent.

On VT100s and their software emulations, such as X terminal emulators, there are normally at least four function keys (:const:`KEY_F1`, :const:`KEY_F2`, :const:`KEY_F3`, :const:`KEY_F4`) available, and the arrow keys mapped to :const:`KEY_UP`, :const:`KEY_DOWN`, :const:`KEY_LEFT` and :const:`KEY_RIGHT` in the obvious way. If your machine has a PC keyboard, it is safe to expect arrow keys and twelve function keys (older PC keyboards may have only ten function keys); also, the following keypad mappings are standard:

The following table lists characters from the alternate character set. These are inherited from the VT100 terminal, and will generally be available on software emulations such as X terminals. When there is no graphic available, curses falls back on a crude printable ASCII approximation.

The following table lists the predefined colors:

:mod:`curses.textpad` --- Text input widget for curses programs

The :mod:`curses.textpad` module provides a :class:`Textbox` class that handles elementary text editing in a curses window, supporting a set of keybindings resembling those of Emacs (thus, also of Netscape Navigator, BBedit 6.x, FrameMaker, and many other programs). The module also provides a rectangle-drawing function useful for framing text boxes or for other purposes.

The module :mod:`curses.textpad` defines the following function:

Textbox objects

You can instantiate a :class:`Textbox` object as follows:

Return a textbox widget object. The win argument should be a curses :class:`WindowObject` in which the textbox is to be contained. The edit cursor of the textbox is initially located at the upper left hand corner of the containing window, with coordinates (0, 0). The instance's :attr:`stripspaces` flag is initially on.

:class:`Textbox` objects have the following methods:

:mod:`curses.wrapper` --- Terminal handler for curses programs

This module supplies one function, :func:`wrapper`, which runs another function which should be the rest of your curses-using application. If the application raises an exception, :func:`wrapper` will restore the terminal to a sane state before re-raising the exception and generating a traceback.

Before calling the hook function, :func:`wrapper` turns on cbreak mode, turns off echo, enables the terminal keypad, and initializes colors if the terminal has color support. On exit (whether normally or by exception) it restores cooked mode, turns on echo, and disables the terminal keypad.