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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | NOTES | EXTENSIONS | PORTABILITY | HISTORY | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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curs_mouse(3X) Library calls curs_mouse(3X)
has_mouse, getmouse, ungetmouse, mousemask, wenclose, mouse_trafo,
wmouse_trafo, mouseinterval, mmask_t, MEVENT - get mouse events in
ncurses
#include <curses.h>
/* data types */
typedef unsigned long mmask_t;
typedef struct {
short id; /* ID to distinguish multiple devices */
int x, y, z; /* event coordinates */
mmask_t bstate; /* button state bits */
} MEVENT;
/* functions */
bool has_mouse(void);
mmask_t mousemask(mmask_t new-mask, mmask_t * old-mask);
int getmouse(MEVENT * event);
int ungetmouse(MEVENT * event);
bool wenclose(const WINDOW * win, int y, int x);
bool mouse_trafo(int * pY, int * pX, bool to-screen);
bool wmouse_trafo(const WINDOW * win,
int * pY, int * pX, bool to-screen);
int mouseinterval(int erval);
ncurses provides an interface to the mouse or other pointing
device. An application can register its interest in such events;
the library then exposes the availability of a mouse event via an
input character reading function: this is wgetch(3X) in the non-
wide character curses API and wget_wch(3X) in the wide character
API. A queue distinct from that used for keyboard events
accumulates the details of mouse events. The input character
reading function reports the KEY_MOUSE key code when a mouse event
is available for collection. A single mouse event queue serves
all windows associated with the screen.
The MEVENT structure describes a mouse event. Its y and x
coordinates are screen-, not window-, relative. The bstate member
has exactly one bit set indicating the event type.
ncurses ignores mouse events when input is in canonical (“cooked”)
mode, and produces an error beep when they occur while the library
simulates canonical mode in a window, as with getstr(3X) (wide-
character API users: get_wstr(3X)), which expects a line feed to
terminate its input loop.
has_mouse
The terminal type or operating system interface must support the
encoding of mouse events. has_mouse returns TRUE if ncurses's
mouse driver initialized successfully, and FALSE otherwise.
mousemask
Use mousemask to select the varieties of mouse event your
application wishes to receive. By default, ncurses reports no
mouse events.
• The function returns an updated copy of new-mask indicating
which event types of interest are reportable by the terminal's
mouse protocol.
If the screen is not initialized, or the terminal interface
does not report mouse events, mousemask returns 0.
• If old-mask is not a null pointer, mousemask stores the
previous value of the screen's mouse event mask there.
As a side effect, setting a zero mouse mask may turn off the mouse
cursor; setting a nonzero mask may turn it on. Whether this
happens is device-dependent.
Mouse Events
Several mouse event types may be selected; construct a mask by
logically “or”-ing their values.
Name Description
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
BUTTON1_PRESSED mouse button 1 down
BUTTON1_RELEASED mouse button 1 up
BUTTON1_CLICKED mouse button 1 clicked
BUTTON1_DOUBLE_CLICKED mouse button 1 double clicked
BUTTON1_TRIPLE_CLICKED mouse button 1 triple clicked
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
BUTTON2_PRESSED mouse button 2 down
BUTTON2_RELEASED mouse button 2 up
BUTTON2_CLICKED mouse button 2 clicked
BUTTON2_DOUBLE_CLICKED mouse button 2 double clicked
BUTTON2_TRIPLE_CLICKED mouse button 2 triple clicked
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
BUTTON3_PRESSED mouse button 3 down
BUTTON3_RELEASED mouse button 3 up
BUTTON3_CLICKED mouse button 3 clicked
BUTTON3_DOUBLE_CLICKED mouse button 3 double clicked
BUTTON3_TRIPLE_CLICKED mouse button 3 triple clicked
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
BUTTON4_PRESSED mouse button 4 down
BUTTON4_RELEASED mouse button 4 up
BUTTON4_CLICKED mouse button 4 clicked
BUTTON4_DOUBLE_CLICKED mouse button 4 double clicked
BUTTON4_TRIPLE_CLICKED mouse button 4 triple clicked
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
BUTTON5_PRESSED mouse button 5 down
BUTTON5_RELEASED mouse button 5 up
BUTTON5_CLICKED mouse button 5 clicked
BUTTON5_DOUBLE_CLICKED mouse button 5 double clicked
BUTTON5_TRIPLE_CLICKED mouse button 5 triple clicked
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
BUTTON_SHIFT a shift key was down during button state
change
BUTTON_CTRL a control key was down during button
state change
BUTTON_ALT an alt key was down during button state
change
ALL_MOUSE_EVENTS report all button state changes
REPORT_MOUSE_POSITION report mouse movement
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
getmouse
When a window is configured to report a non-empty set of event
types, calling the input character reading function on that window
may return KEY_MOUSE to indicate availability of an enqueued mouse
event. To read the event data and remove it from the queue, call
getmouse, which returns OK if a mouse event is visible in the
given window and ERR otherwise. When getmouse returns OK, it
deposits data describing the mouse event in the event pointer you
supply. A subsequent getmouse call retrieves the next older event
from the queue.
ungetmouse
ungetmouse behaves analogously to ungetch(3X). It pushes a
KEY_MOUSE event onto the screen's input queue, and event onto the
mouse event queue.
wenclose
wenclose returns TRUE if the pair of screen-relative coordinates
(y, x) is enclosed by the given window win, and FALSE otherwise.
If win is a pad, wenclose uses its most recent screen coordinates
as specified in a prefresh(3X) or pnoutrefresh(3X) call.
wenclose is useful for determining what subset of the screen's
windows encloses the location of a mouse event; it is otherwise
independent of the ncurses mouse API.
wmouse_trafo
wmouse_trafo transforms the given pair of coordinate pointers (pY,
pX) from a win-relative basis to a screen-relative one or vice
versa, as to-screen is TRUE or FALSE, respectively.
stdscr-relative coordinates are not always identical to screen
coordinates: curses supports reservation of screen lines at the
top and/or bottom for other purposes; see ripoffline(3X) and
slk_init(3X).
If to-screen is TRUE and the pointers (pY, pX) reference
coordinates inside win, ncurses updates their values to
stdscr-relative coordinates and returns TRUE. If either pY or pX
is a null pointer, or (pY, pX) is not inside win, wmouse_trafo
returns FALSE.
If to-screen is FALSE and the pointers (pY, pX) reference
coordinates inside stdscr, ncurses updates their values to win-
relative coordinates and returns TRUE. If either pY or pX is a
null pointer, or (pY, pX) is not inside stdscr, wmouse_trafo
returns FALSE.
mouse_trafo
mouse_trafo applies the wmouse_trafo translation to stdscr. If no
screen lines are reserved by ripoffline(3X) or slk_init(3X), this
is the identity transformation.
mouseinterval
mouseinterval sets the maximum time (in thousandths of a second)
that can elapse between press and release events for them to be
resolved as a click. An application might interpret button press
and release events separated by more than the mouse interval as a
“long press”, or, with motion, as a “drag”.
When ncurses detects a mouse event, it awaits further input
activity up to this interval, and then checks for a subsequent
mouse event which can be combined with the first event. If the
timeout expires without input activity, then no click resolution
occurs. Calling mouseinterval(0) disables click resolution.
mouseinterval returns the previous interval value. Use
mouseinterval(-1) to obtain the interval without altering it.
The mouse interval is set to one sixth of a second when the
corresponding screen is initialized, e.g., in initscr(3X) or
setupterm(3X).
has_mouse, wenclose, mouse_trafo, and wmouse_trafo return TRUE or
FALSE as noted above.
getmouse and ungetmouse return ERR upon failure and OK upon
success.
getmouse fails if:
• no mouse driver was initialized,
• the mask of reportable events is zero,
• a mouse event was detected that does not match the mask, or
• no more events remain in the queue.
ungetmouse returns ERR if the event queue is full.
mousemask returns the mask of reportable events.
mouseinterval returns the previous interval value, unless the
terminal was not initialized. In that case, it returns the
maximum interval value (166).
The order of the MEVENT structure members is not guaranteed.
Additional fields may be added to the structure in the future.
Under ncurses, these calls are implemented using either xterm's
built-in mouse-tracking API or platform-specific drivers including
• Alessandro Rubini's gpm server
• FreeBSD sysmouse
• OS/2 EMX
If you are using an unsupported configuration, mouse events are
not visible to ncurses (and the mousemask function always returns
0).
If the terminal type possesses the (nonstandard) terminfo string
capability XM, ncurses's xterm mouse driver uses it when
initializing the terminal for mouse operation. The default, if XM
is not found, corresponds to private mode 1000 of xterm.
\E[?1000%?%p1%{1}%=%th%el%;
ncurses also recognizes xterm's newer private mode 1006.
\E[?1006;1000%?%p1%{1}%=%th%el%;
The id member of the mouse event structure is not presently used;
no terminal type or operating system interface supports reporting
events from distinguishable pointing devices. If you synthesize
an MEVENT, use an id of 0.
The z member of the mouse event structure is not presently used.
It is intended for use with touch screens (which may be pressure-
sensitive) or with 3D-mice/trackballs/power gloves.
The ALL_MOUSE_EVENTS class does not include REPORT_MOUSE_POSITION.
They are distinct. For example, in xterm, wheel/scrolling mice
send position reports as a sequence of presses of buttons 4 or 5
without matching button-releases.
These functions are ncurses extensions, and are not found in SVr4
curses, 4.4BSD curses, or any other previous curses
implementation. (SVr4 curses did have a getmouse function, which
took no argument and returned an unsigned long.)
Applications employing the ncurses mouse extension should
condition its use on the visibility of the NCURSES_MOUSE_VERSION
preprocessor macro. When the interface changes, the macro's value
increments. Multiple versions are available when ncurses is
configured; see section “ALTERNATE CONFIGURATIONS” of ncurses(3X).
The following values may be specified.
1 has definitions for reserved events. The mask uses 28 bits.
2 adds definitions for button 5, removes the definitions for
reserved events. The mask uses 29 bits.
SVr4 (1989) added mouse support to its variant of xterm(1). It is
mentioned in a few places, with little supporting documentation.
• Its “libcurses” manual page lists functions for this feature
prototyped in curses.h.
extern int mouse_set(long int);
extern int mouse_on(long int);
extern int mouse_off(long int);
extern int request_mouse_pos(void);
extern int map_button(unsigned long);
extern void wmouse_position(WINDOW *, int *, int *);
extern unsigned long getmouse(void), getbmap(void);
• Its “terminfo” manual page lists capabilities for the feature.
buttons btns BT Number of buttons on the
mouse
get_mouse getm Gm Curses should get button
events
key_mouse kmous Km 0631, Mouse event has
occurred
mouse_info minfo Mi Mouse status information
req_mouse_pos reqmp RQ Request mouse position report
• The interface made assumptions (as does ncurses) about the
escape sequences sent to and received from the terminal.
For instance, the SVr4 curses library used the get_mouse
(getm) capability to tell the terminal which mouse button
events it should send, passing the mouse-button bit mask to
the terminal. Also, it could ask the terminal where the mouse
was using the req_mouse_pos (reqmp) capability.
Those features required a terminal program that had been
modified to work with SVr4 curses. They were not part of the
X Consortium's xterm.
When developing the xterm mouse support for ncurses in September
1995, Eric Raymond was uninterested in using the same interface
due to its lack of documentation. Later, in 1998, Mark Hesseling
provided support in PDCurses 2.3 using the SVr4 interface.
PDCurses, however, does not use video terminals, making it
unnecessary to be concerned about compatibility with the escape
sequences.
Mouse events from xterm are not ignored in canonical (“cooked”)
mode if they have been enabled by mousemask. Instead, the xterm
mouse report sequence appears in the string read.
An ncurses window must enable keypad(3X) to correctly receive
mouse event reports from xterm since they are encoded like
function keys. Set the terminal's terminfo capability key_mouse
(kmous) to “\E[M” (the beginning of the response from xterm for
mouse clicks). Other values of key_mouse are permitted under the
same assumption — that is, a mouse report begins with the value of
the key_mouse (kmous) string capability.
Because there are no standard response sequences that serve to
identify terminals supporting the xterm mouse protocol, ncurses
assumes that if key_mouse (kmous) is defined in the terminal
description, or if the terminal type's primary name or aliases
contain the string “xterm”, then the terminal may send mouse
events. ncurses checks the kmous cap-code first, allowing use of
newer xterm mouse protocols, such as its private mode 1006.
curses(3X), curs_inopts(3X), curs_kernel(3X), curs_pad(3X),
curs_slk(3X), curs_variables(3X)
This page is part of the ncurses (new curses) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.html⟩. If you have a
bug report for this manual page, send it to bug-ncurses@gnu.org.
This page was obtained from the tarball ncurses-6.6.tar.gz fetched
from ⟨https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/⟩ on 2026-01-16. If you
discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the
page, or you have corrections or improvements to the information
in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page),
send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
ncurses @NCURSES_MAJOR@.@NCU... 2025-11-11 curs_mouse(3X)
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HTML rendering created 2026-01-16 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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