_Inkey from 4UTILS

[Joe Caverly]

Hey @vefatica,
I cannot get _Inkey to recognize the spacebar;

:: _inkey is from 4UTILS plugin
::
@setlocal
@echo off
do forever
  set theKey=%_inkey
    switch %theKey
    case 0
      delay /m 100
    case @8
      Gosub Backspace
    case @13
      echo Enter
      leave
    case @32
      Gosub Spacebar
    case @62
      Gosub F4
    endswitch
enddo
endlocal
quit

:Backspace
  echo Backspace
Return

:F4
  echo F4
Return

:Spacebar
  echo Spacebar
Return

It would be helpful if _Inkey would recognize the Spacebar (032).

Joe

 

[vefatica]

Well, it does recognize it. But if you echo it you just get "ECHO IS OFF". And you can't test for it.

"@32" is a good idea (why didn't I think of that? :-). I'll make the change but it might take a while to go through 4UTILS and disable experimental and not_for_public_consumption things. In the meantime you can get the one I just put in ftp://vefatica.net's "experimental" directory. I don't think there's anything in it that will prevent it from working. There's no new TXT file so if you have an old one, keep it.

v:\> do forever (echo %_inkey & delay 1)
0
0
@32
0
0

 

[Joe Caverly]

Thanks @vefatica, that works.

e:\utils>inkey.btm
Spacebar
Spacebar
F4
Backspace
Backspace
Enter

Joe

 

[vefatica]

Hey @Joe Caverly ...

_INKEY has other shortcomings. Here's how it works at the moment.

1. If 32 < c < 127 it gives the character. Like the spacebar, that could be problematic with the likes of backquote, double_quote, percent (and maybe others).

2. if 0 < c <= 32 it gives "@NN"

3. If c > 65536 it gives "@(c - 65536)". These could conflict with the ones in (2) (example: Ctrl-B (2) and CTRL_1 (also 2, see below)) because there are many like these (from TAKECMD.H, just to show a few):

#define FBIT 0x10000 // 65536)
#define CTRL_0        (11+FBIT)
#define CTRL_1        (2+FBIT)
#define CTRL_2        (3+FBIT)
#define CTRL_3        (4+FBIT)
(the list goes on)

4. For any other character it tries to print the character. This poses a few problems. Many Unicode characters (which can be entered with Alt-keypad) will be not printable (depending on font and code page).

So I'm wondering how I can make it more robust OR simpler.

Got any ideas?

Note that there are characters that _INKEY just doesn't see because Windows of something else gobbles them up.