curses KEY_* constants

[Bill Green]

Hello,

According to the documentation for the curses module, there are a number of
constants defined for various special keys (such as KEY_DOWN, KEY_UP,
KEY_BACKSPACE, etc.). However, these do not exist on my system (NetBSD 5).

Looking at _cursesmodule.c, the code that sets up the KEY_ variables is #defined
out on NetBSD (in initcurses() at line 2860 for Python 2.7). Does anyone know
why this is so?

Thanks.

 

[Bill Green]

I perhaps should have mentioned I linked the Python curses module against
ncurses rather than BSD curses. Perhaps NetBSD's curses doesn't support this
feature, and that's why it's not included there.

In any case, I removed the relevant #defines in _cursesmodule.c and got a
Python that includes all the KEY_ constants in the curses module, but these
constants (for the arrow keys at least) seem not to match the actual
keycodes.

 

[Bill Green]

... but these
constants (for the arrow keys at least) seem not to match the actual
keycodes.

After looking at the documentation again I've realized I needed to enable keypad
mode on the window for curses to catch the escape codes, and now everything's
working.

It seems to me that _cursesmodule.c should check at compile time to
see if the platform is NetBSD AND ncurses isn't being used.

Regards,
Bill