How do I get char directly from keyboard not through buffer?

Question

I am making a game which has a character moves in 4 directions: up, down, left, right corresponding to W,S,A,D on the keyboard. The problem is when using getch() to get input from buffer, it always has a pause time after the first single keypress. For instance, when I hold 'A' button, it acts like: A(a short period of time)AAAAAAAAA.

How do I get rid of that delay time?

Any help would be appreciated.

(Answers in either C or C++ are all acceptable, since I am using graphics.h for this program, which requires C++ to run, but I mainly code in C).

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I am using windows 10 64 bits.

Answer 1

For a non-blocking getch method I personally use this piece of code (in C):

#include <conio.h>

int getch_noblock(){
   return _kbhit() ? _getch() : -1;
}

the _kbhit() method returns 0 if no key are pressed, otherwise returns a number if the keyboard input buffer is not empty.

the _getch() method read a char from the keyboard buffer.

It works only for Windows.

Documentation:

1. _khbit(): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-runtime-library/reference/kbhit?view=msvc-170
2. _getch(): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-runtime-library/reference/getch-getwch?view=msvc-170

By the way, surfing on the web I found an interesting method, but I've never tried or seen it: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-runtime-library/reference/getch-nolock-getwch-nolock?view=msvc-170

Answer 2

getch() already bypasses buffer:

 Prototype
         int _getch(void);  

 Description
         _getch obtains a character  from stdin. Input is unbuffered, and this
         routine  will  return as  soon as  a character is  available  without 
         waiting for a carriage return. The character is not echoed to stdout.
         _getch bypasses the normal buffering done by getchar and getc.

And for your problem, as someone already said, you can use the kbhit() method