Need advice on converting programs from Borland C compiler

Need advice on converting programs from Borland C compiler

[David J. Stelte]

I have a few programs that were written for DOS and compiled under the 
Borland Turbo C compiler that I need to convert to run under the Linux 
like environment in Cygwin.  The code has a lot of cursor positioning 
function calls like gotoxy(), makes use of screen colors using a 
function called cprintf(), and has some functions for getting getting 
special characters from the keyboard like F1-F12.  Is there a library 
that comes with the native GCC that comes with Cygwin that has these or 
similar functions?  I can't seem to find it.  Advice...?

Dave Stelte
stelte@comcast.net

Re: Need advice on converting programs from Borland C compiler

[Eljay Love-Jensen]

Hi Dave,

What you want is the library called "ncurses".

There are analogous functions between ncurses and Borland's console 
interface library.  But they are not identical in use and initialization.

You might be able to make your own shim layer (functions called "cprintf" 
and "gotoxy" and such) which map to ncurses functions.

If I remember correctly, ncurses either includes or has available a C++ 
wrapper to facilitate using ncurses.  You may want to refactor your code to 
use the C++ wrappers.

See: http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ncurses.html

Good luck,
--Eljay