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Why can't I use conio.h or ncurses.h?

By David Jones •

I am new user to Ubuntu. I wrote a simple program in C. When I try to compile it to use conio.h, the compiler gives me fatal error. So I tried by ncurses.h, but still I am getting same error.

4

1 Answer

Why conio.h Isn't Available

g_p mostly answered this in a comment:

conio.h is not present in Linux. You need to use curses or ncurses. But if you are getting error likefatal error: curses.h: No such file or directory', it means this library is not installed.

For more information on conio.h (and how it's DOS/Windows specific), see the Wikipedia article on it.

Why ncurses.h Wasn't Available, and How To Fix It

As for ncurses, it's necessary to install the libncurses5-dev Install libncurses5-dev (or libncursesw5-dev Install libncursesw5-dev) package, and then pass the -lncurses argument to gcc when compiling, for example:

gcc -Wall -g -o hello hello.c -lncurses

See How do I create simplistic window-like elements in a command-line program? (and its sources) for more information.

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