border(3NCURSES) Library calls border(3NCURSES)
NAME
border, wborder, box, hline, whline, vline, wvline, mvhline, mvwhline,
mvvline, mvwvline - draw borders and lines in a curses window of charac-
ters
SYNOPSIS
#include <curses.h>
int border(chtype ls, chtype rs, chtype ts, chtype bs,
chtype tl, chtype tr, chtype bl, chtype br);
int wborder(WINDOW *win, chtype ls, chtype rs,
chtype ts, chtype bs, chtype tl, chtype tr,
chtype bl, chtype br);
int box(WINDOW *win, chtype verch, chtype horch);
int hline(chtype ch, int n);
int whline(WINDOW *win, chtype ch, int n);
int mvhline(int y, int x, chtype ch, int n);
int mvwhline(WINDOW *win, int y, int x, chtype ch, int n);
int vline(chtype ch, int n);
int wvline(WINDOW *win, chtype ch, int n);
int mvvline(int y, int x, chtype ch, int n);
int mvwvline(WINDOW *win, int y, int x, chtype ch, int n);
DESCRIPTION
wborder and border draw a box at the edges of the specified window or
stdscr, respectively. Each chtype argument corresponds to a geometric
component of the border as follows:
ls - left side,
rs - right side,
ts - top side,
bs - bottom side,
tl - top left-hand corner,
tr - top right-hand corner,
bl - bottom left-hand corner, and
br - bottom right-hand corner.
If any chtype argument is 0, then curses uses forms-drawing characters
(see addch(3NCURSES)) in the following correspondence:
ACS_VLINE,
ACS_VLINE,
ACS_HLINE,
ACS_HLINE,
ACS_ULCORNER,
ACS_URCORNER,
ACS_LLCORNER, and
ACS_LRCORNER.
box(win, verch, horch) is shorthand for “wborder(win, verch, horch, 0,
0, 0, 0)”.
whline draws a horizontal line of ch from left to right, and wvline a
vertical one from top to bottom, stopping once n characters have been
drawn or upon reaching the boundary of win. These functions do not up-
date the cursor position (beyond any motion directed by their “mv” vari-
ants). ncurses(3NCURSES) describes the variants of these functions.
RETURN VALUE
These functions return OK on success and ERR on failure.
In ncurses,
• these functions fail if the screen is not initialized; and
• functions taking a WINDOW pointer argument fail if win is a null
pointer.
Functions prefixed with “mv” first perform cursor movement and fail if
the position (y, x) is outside the window boundaries.
NOTES
Unusually, there is no wbox function; box behaves as one would expect
wbox to, accepting a WINDOW pointer argument.
border, box, hline, mvhline, mvwhline, vline, mvvline, and mvwvline may
be implemented as macros.
Borders drawn by these functions are interior borders.
PORTABILITY
These functions are described in X/Open Curses Issue 4. It specifies no
error conditions for them.
SVr4 documentation says that these functions return OK “or a non-nega-
tive integer if immedok() is set”, referring to the return value from
wrefresh, which in SVr4 returns a count of characters written to the
window if its immedok property is set; in ncurses, it does not.
BSD curses drew boxes with horch in every character cell of the top and
bottom lines of the window, whereas SVr3.1 and later curses, because its
box wrapped wborder, used the default corner characters.
HISTORY
4BSD (1980) introduced box, defining it as a function.
SVr3.1 (1987) added whline and wvline and their variants, as well as
border and wborder, redefining box as a macro wrapping the latter.
SEE ALSO
ncurses(3NCURSES), outopts(3NCURSES)
ncurses 6.5 2025-02-01 border(3NCURSES)
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