From: Chong Kai Xiong <w_velocity AT yahoo DOT com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Quirky getch()
Date: Thu, 06 May 1999 00:01:42 +0800
Organization: Singapore Telecommunications Ltd
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <37306B66.BFCC4CDD@yahoo.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: as002352.singnet.com.sg
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I)
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

I was testing my vector class library when I discovered some very
strange things about getch(). I thought my library was buggy until I
wrote this test program:

#include <conio.h>
#include <iostream.h>

int main() {
  clrscr();
  cout << "Hello World\n";
  cout << "Sing along!";
  getch();
  return 0;
}

Normally, we (at least I did :) would expect "Hello World" and "Sing
along!" to be printed before the program pauses to wait for a keypress;
The strange thing is, it doesn't. The program prints "Hello World" and
then waits for a keypress before continuing to print "Sing along!". The
problem can easily solved by replacing "getch();" with "Key = getch();"
But why does it work this time? And the even stranger thing is that if I
add a line feed i.e. "\n" at the end of the second output string, it
works correctly too. Can anyone shed some light?