ncurses is a programming
library providing an
API, allowing the programmer to write
text user interfaces in a terminal-independent manner. It also optimizes screen changes, in order to reduce the
latency experienced when using remote
shells.Ncurses stands for "new curses", and is a replacement for the discontinued 4.4 BSD classic
curses. Most ncurses calls can be easily ported to the old curses; however, a few areas are problematic, such as handling terminal resizing (since no counterpart exists in the old curses). Other subtle differences in call semantics can make porting an ncurses application to commercial
Unix somewhat difficult.
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