how to check the status of mouse-button/ a key press in linux using C ?
 

Hi all,
In a C code, I need to :
1) check if a mouse button is pressed down. I need to check this status of mouse button again and again inside a loop. Depending on the status, some function will be called.
OR
2) check if some key of the keyboard is pressed down. I need to check this status of 'key' again and again inside a loop. Depending on the status, some function will be called.

Either of the two above will serve my purpose.

I am using Ubuntu 10.10.
Please help. Its urgent...

Well this seems like the wrong section and you used a forbidden word. It maybe Urgent for you, it's really not urgent for us, however since most of the post is to the point or well formed....

I have seen several things that could point you in the right direction on <insert generic search engine here> with just entering "C library mouse". This is never something I have done with C so I couldn't give anymore advice then that myself.

Overall I don't think this is going to have a simple answer as I don't think C holds a keypress status, you could do a getchar or getch but if the user is holding down multiple keys...

Also, that will only work in a terminal. I think that the OP is referring to the key being pressed no matter what window is selected.

I was thinking that too, but unless it's the OS, I can't see any real valid reasons to do that as a program should not really be scanning what an alternative program is doing. There are a few cases but they are limited at best. If it did come down to that, I am guessing that's gunna go into scanning /dev/stdin or the relevant device for the keyboard/mouse... far far out of my depth tho, perhaps there is another way, but not that I know of.

Thank you both for the input. After a lot of googling without any real success, I adopted an alternative simpler approach to do what I wanted without scanning the input device status.... However it will be interesting if someone could find a solution to the task (in my first post above).

Pardon me if I did something wrong (this was my post on LQ)...