Mark asks:

>   I'm writing a text-adventure in Cobol on a 3k.  What I need to do is
> something like BASIC's INKEY function; I want to check if any keyboard input
> has happened and possibly do other processing.
>
>   I *think* I need to open a file to $STDIN and set a quick timeout using
> FCONTROL; am I on the right track?


I don't think the the timeout-FREAD will work as you want it to.
I haven't tried it, but I think what you'll see is that anything entered
between the start of the FREAD and the timeout will be lost if the
timeout occurs before <return> is pressed.

I'd try one of three approaches:

   1) typeahead & timeout-FREAD

      By setting HPTYPEAHEAD to true, you enable typeahead (at least for
      the session's $stdin ... but probably not for any other terminal
      your program may have opened, if any)

      Then, I'd try short reads with a timeout.

      But...*TEST* it before you commit to this structure!
      (And this approach still has problems!)

   2) no wait IO

      You can do No Wait I/O to the terminal, where you issue a read
      and then go off and do something.  Later, you call IODONTWAIT to
      see if the read has completed (in which case you now have a buffer
      of input data ... and you issue another READ eventually).

      Note: this requires the user of privileged mode code (CAP=PM),
      sadly.

      (You may want to enable HPTYPEAHEAD too)

   3) two-process architecture

      The foreground process simply sits in a loop:

           prompt user
           read input    (possibly with a timeout)
           send input to server process (by writing to a message file)
           get output from server process, display to user

      The server process would be the main game program, and it would
      be reading input from a message file ... input that would come from
      any of the player processes.

      (You may want to enable HPTYPEAHEAD too)

My favorite is #3.

--
Stan Sieler                                          [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.allegro.com/sieler.html