curs_refresh(3x) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | NOTES | PORTABILITY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

curs_refresh(3X)                                         curs_refresh(3X)

NAME         top

       doupdate, redrawwin, refresh, wnoutrefresh, wredrawln, wrefresh -
       refresh curses windows and lines

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <curses.h>

       int refresh(void);
       int wrefresh(WINDOW *win);
       int wnoutrefresh(WINDOW *win);
       int doupdate(void);

       int redrawwin(WINDOW *win);
       int wredrawln(WINDOW *win, int beg_line, int num_lines);

DESCRIPTION         top

   refresh/wrefresh
       The  refresh  and wrefresh routines (or wnoutrefresh and doupdate)
       must be called to get actual output to the terminal, as other rou‐
       tines merely manipulate data  structures.   The  routine  wrefresh
       copies  the  named  window to the physical screen, taking into ac‐
       count what is already there to do optimizations.  The refresh rou‐
       tine is the same, using stdscr  as  the  default  window.   Unless
       leaveok(3X)  has been enabled, the physical cursor of the terminal
       is left at the location of the cursor for that window.

   wnoutrefresh/doupdate
       The wnoutrefresh and doupdate routines allow multiple updates with
       more efficiency than wrefresh alone.  In addition to all the  win‐
       dow  structures, curses keeps two data structures representing the
       terminal screen:

       •   a physical screen, describing what is actually on the screen,
           and

       •   a virtual screen, describing what the programmer wants to have
           on the screen.

       The routine wrefresh works by

       •   first calling wnoutrefresh, which copies the named window to
           the virtual screen, and

       •   then calling doupdate, which compares the virtual screen to
           the physical screen and does the actual update.

       If the programmer wishes to output several windows at once, a se‐
       ries of calls to wrefresh results in alternating calls to wnoutre‐
       fresh and doupdate, causing several bursts of output to the
       screen.  By first calling wnoutrefresh for each window, it is then
       possible to call doupdate once, resulting in only one burst of
       output, with fewer total characters transmitted and less CPU time
       used.

       If the win argument to wrefresh is the physical screen (i.e., the
       global variable curscr), the screen is immediately cleared and re‐
       painted from scratch.

       The phrase “copies the named window to the virtual screen” above
       is ambiguous.  What actually happens is that all touched (changed)
       lines in the window are copied to the virtual screen.  This af‐
       fects programs that use overlapping windows; it means that if two
       windows overlap, you can refresh them in either order and the
       overlap region will be modified only when it is explicitly
       changed.  (But see the section on PORTABILITY below for a warning
       about exploiting this behavior.)

   wredrawln/redrawwin
       The wredrawln routine indicates to curses that some screen lines
       are corrupted and should be thrown away before anything is written
       over them.  It touches the indicated lines (marking them changed).
       The routine redrawwin touches the entire window.

RETURN VALUE         top

       Routines that return an integer return ERR upon failure, and OK
       (SVr4 only specifies "an integer value other than ERR") upon suc‐
       cessful completion.

       X/Open does not define any error conditions.  In this implementa‐
       tion

          wnoutrefresh
               returns an error if the window pointer is null, or if the
               window is really a pad.

          wredrawln
               returns an error if the associated call to touchln returns
               an error.

NOTES         top

       Note that refresh and redrawwin may be macros.

PORTABILITY         top

       The XSI Curses standard, Issue 4 describes these functions.

       Whether wnoutrefresh copies to the virtual screen the entire con‐
       tents of a window or just its changed portions has never been
       well-documented in historic curses versions (including SVr4).  It
       might be unwise to rely on either behavior in programs that might
       have to be linked with other curses implementations.  Instead, you
       can do an explicit touchwin before the wnoutrefresh call to guar‐
       antee an entire-contents copy anywhere.

SEE ALSO         top

       curses(3X), curs_outopts(3X) curs_variables(3X).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the ncurses (new curses) project.  Informa‐
       tion about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ncurses.html⟩.  If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, send it to
       bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git mirror of the CVS repository
       ⟨https://github.com/mirror/ncurses.git⟩ on 2025-02-02.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-03-12.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
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       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
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                                                         curs_refresh(3X)