# curs_add_wch 3x 2025-08-16 ncurses 6.5 Library calls

    curs_add_wch(3x)                 Library calls                curs_add_wch(3x)

## NAME

           add_wch, wadd_wch, mvadd_wch, mvwadd_wch, echo_wchar, wecho_wchar - add
           a curses complex character to a window, possibly advancing the cursor

## SYNOPSIS

           #include <curses.h>

           int add_wch(const cchar_t * wch);
           int wadd_wch(WINDOW * win, const cchar_t * wch);
           int mvadd_wch(int y, int x, const cchar_t * wch);
           int mvwadd_wch(WINDOW * win, int y, int x,
                 const cchar_t * wch);

           int echo_wchar(const cchar_t * wch);
           int wecho_wchar(WINDOW * win, const cchar_t *wch);

           /* (integer) constants */
           /* ... */ WACS_BLOCK;
           /* ... */ WACS_BOARD;
           /* ... */ WACS_BTEE;
           /* ... */ WACS_BULLET;
           /* ... */ WACS_CKBOARD;
           /* ... */ WACS_DARROW;
           /* ... */ WACS_DEGREE;
           /* ... */ WACS_DIAMOND;
           /* ... */ WACS_HLINE;
           /* ... */ WACS_LANTERN;
           /* ... */ WACS_LARROW;
           /* ... */ WACS_LLCORNER;
           /* ... */ WACS_LRCORNER;
           /* ... */ WACS_LTEE;
           /* ... */ WACS_PLMINUS;
           /* ... */ WACS_PLUS;
           /* ... */ WACS_RARROW;
           /* ... */ WACS_RTEE;
           /* ... */ WACS_S1;
           /* ... */ WACS_S9;
           /* ... */ WACS_TTEE;
           /* ... */ WACS_UARROW;
           /* ... */ WACS_ULCORNER;
           /* ... */ WACS_URCORNER;
           /* ... */ WACS_VLINE;
           /* extensions */
           /* ... */ WACS_GEQUAL;
           /* ... */ WACS_LEQUAL;
           /* ... */ WACS_NEQUAL;
           /* ... */ WACS_PI;
           /* ... */ WACS_S3;
           /* ... */ WACS_S7;
           /* ... */ WACS_STERLING;
           /* extensions for thick lines */
           /* ... */ WACS_T_BTEE;
           /* ... */ WACS_T_HLINE;
           /* ... */ WACS_T_LLCORNER;
           /* ... */ WACS_T_LRCORNER;
           /* ... */ WACS_T_LTEE;
           /* ... */ WACS_T_PLUS;
           /* ... */ WACS_T_RTEE;
           /* ... */ WACS_T_TTEE;
           /* ... */ WACS_T_ULCORNER;
           /* ... */ WACS_T_URCORNER;
           /* ... */ WACS_T_VLINE;
           /* extensions for double lines */
           /* ... */ WACS_D_BTEE;
           /* ... */ WACS_D_HLINE;
           /* ... */ WACS_D_LLCORNER;
           /* ... */ WACS_D_LRCORNER;
           /* ... */ WACS_D_LTEE;
           /* ... */ WACS_D_PLUS;
           /* ... */ WACS_D_RTEE;
           /* ... */ WACS_D_TTEE;
           /* ... */ WACS_D_ULCORNER;
           /* ... */ WACS_D_URCORNER;
           /* ... */ WACS_D_VLINE;

## DESCRIPTION

### wadd_wch

           wadd_wch writes the curses complex character wch  to  the  window  win,
           then  may  advance  the  cursor position, analogously to the standard C
           library's putwchar(3).  ncurses(3x)  describes  the  variants  of  this
           function.

           Construct  a curses complex character from a wchar_t with setcchar(3x).
           A cchar_t can be copied from  place  to  place  using  win_wch(3x)  and
           wadd_wch.    curses  defines  constants  to  aid  the  manipulation  of
           character attributes; see curs_attr(3x).   A  complex  character  whose
           only  character  component is a wide space, and whose only attribute is
           WA_NORMAL, is a  blank  character,  and  therefore  combines  with  the
           window's background character; see curs_bkgrnd(3x).

           Much behavior depends on whether the wide characters in wch are spacing
           or non-spacing; see subsection "Complex Characters" below.

           o   If wch contains a spacing character,  then  any  character  at  the
               cursor  is  first  removed.   The  complex  character wch, with its
               attributes and color pair  identifier,  becomes  the  base  of  the
               active complex character.

           o   If wch contains only non-spacing characters, they are combined with
               the active complex character.  curses ignores  its  attributes  and
               color pair identifier, and does not advance the cursor.

           Further  non-spacing  characters added with wadd_wch are not written at
           the new cursor position but combine with the active  complex  character
           until  another spacing character is written to the window or the cursor
           is moved.

           If wch is a backspace, carriage return, line feed, or tab,  the  cursor
           moves appropriately within the window.

           o   Backspace  moves  the cursor one character left; at the left margin
               of a window, it does nothing.

           o   Carriage return moves the cursor to the left  margin  on  the  same
               line of the window.

           o   Line  feed  does a clrtoeol(3x), then advances as if from the right
               margin.

           o   Tab advances the cursor to the next tab stop (possibly on the  next
               line); these are placed at every eighth column by default.

               Alter   the   tab   interval   with   the  TABSIZE  extension;  see
               curs_variables(3x).

           If wch  is  any  other  nonprintable  character,  curses  draws  it  in
           printable  form  using  the  same  convention  as wunctrl(3x).  Calling
           win_wch(3x) on the location of a nonprintable character does not return
           the character itself, but its wunctrl(3x) representation.

           Adding  spacing characters with wadd_wch causes it to wrap at the right
           margin of the window:

           o   If the cursor is not at the bottom  of  the  scrolling  region  and
               advancement  occurs  at  the right margin, the cursor automatically
               wraps to the beginning of the next line.

           o   If the cursor is  at  the  bottom  of  the  scrolling  region  when
               advancement occurs at the right margin, and scrollok(3x) is enabled
               for win, the scrolling region scrolls up one line  and  the  cursor
               wraps as above.  Otherwise, advancement and scrolling do not occur,
               and wadd_wch returns ERR.

           A window's margins may coincide with the screen boundaries.   This  may
           be  a  problem  when  ncurses  updates  the  screen to match the curses
           window.  When their right and bottom  margins  coincide,  ncurses  uses
           different strategies to handle the variations of scrolling and wrapping
           at the lower-right corner by depending on the terminal capabilities:

           o   If the terminal does not automatically wrap as characters are added
               at  the right margin (i.e., auto right margins), ncurses writes the
               character directly.

           o   If the terminal has auto right margins, but also  has  capabilities
               for  turning auto margins off and on, ncurses turns the auto margin
               feature off temporarily when writing to the lower-right corner.

           o   If the terminal has an insertion mode which can be turned  off  and
               on,  ncurses  writes  the  character  just  before  the lower-right
               corner, and then inserts a character to push the  update  into  the
               corner.

### wecho_wchar

           echo_wchar   and  wecho_wchar  are  equivalent  to  calling  (w)add_wch
           followed by (w)refresh on  stdscr  or  the  specified  window.   curses
           interprets  these  functions  as  a  hint  that only a single (complex)
           character is being output; for non-control characters,  a  considerable
           performance gain may be enjoyed by employing them.

### Forms-Drawing Characters

           curses  defines  macros  starting  with  WACS_  that  can  be used with
           wadd_wch to  write  line-drawing  and  other  symbols  to  the  screen.
           ncurses  terms  these  forms-drawing  characters.   curses uses the ACS
           default listed below if the terminal type lacks  the  acs_chars  (acsc)
           capability;  that  capability  does  not  define  a replacement for the
           character; or if the terminal type  and  locale  configuration  require
           Unicode  to  access  these characters, but the library is unable to use
           Unicode.  The "acsc char" column corresponds to how the characters  are
           specified in the acs_chars (acsc) string capability, and the characters
           in it may appear on the screen if the terminal  type's  database  entry
           incorrectly  advertises  ACS support.  The name "ACS" originates in the
           Alternate Character Set feature of the DEC VT100 terminal.

                           Unicode   ACS       acsc
           Symbol          Default   Default   char   Glyph Name
           ------------------------------------------------------------------------
           WACS_BLOCK      U+25ae    #         0      solid square block
           WACS_BOARD      U+2592    #         h      board of squares
           WACS_BTEE       U+2534    +         v      bottom tee
           WACS_BULLET     U+00b7    o         ~      bullet
           WACS_CKBOARD    U+2592    :         a      checker board (stipple)
           WACS_DARROW     U+2193    v         .      arrow pointing down
           WACS_DEGREE     U+00b0    '         f      degree symbol

           WACS_DIAMOND    U+25c6    +         `      diamond
           WACS_GEQUAL     U+2265    >         >      greater-than-or-equal-to
           WACS_HLINE      U+2500    -         q      horizontal line
           WACS_LANTERN    U+2603    #         i      lantern symbol
           WACS_LARROW     U+2190    <         ,      arrow pointing left
           WACS_LEQUAL     U+2264    <         y      less-than-or-equal-to
           WACS_LLCORNER   U+2514    +         m      lower left-hand corner
           WACS_LRCORNER   U+2518    +         j      lower right-hand corner
           WACS_LTEE       U+2524    +         t      left tee
           WACS_NEQUAL     U+2260    !         |      not-equal
           WACS_PI         U+03c0    *         {      greek pi
           WACS_PLMINUS    U+00b1    #         g      plus/minus
           WACS_PLUS       U+253c    +         n      plus
           WACS_RARROW     U+2192    >         +      arrow pointing right
           WACS_RTEE       U+251c    +         u      right tee
           WACS_S1         U+23ba    -         o      scan line 1
           WACS_S3         U+23bb    -         p      scan line 3
           WACS_S7         U+23bc    -         r      scan line 7
           WACS_S9         U+23bd    _         s      scan line 9
           WACS_STERLING   U+00a3    f         }      pound-sterling symbol
           WACS_TTEE       U+252c    +         w      top tee
           WACS_UARROW     U+2191    ^         -      arrow pointing up
           WACS_ULCORNER   U+250c    +         l      upper left-hand corner
           WACS_URCORNER   U+2510    +         k      upper right-hand corner
           WACS_VLINE      U+2502    |         x      vertical line

           The ncurses wide API also defines symbols for  thick  lines  (acsc  "J"
           through "N", "T" through "X", and "Q"):

                             Unicode   ASCII     acsc
           ACS Name          Default   Default   Char   Glyph Name
           ------------------------------------------------------------------------
           WACS_T_BTEE       U+253b    +         V      thick tee pointing up
           WACS_T_HLINE      U+2501    -         Q      thick horizontal line
           WACS_T_LLCORNER   U+2517    +         M      thick lower left corner
           WACS_T_LRCORNER   U+251b    +         J      thick lower right corner
           WACS_T_LTEE       U+252b    +         T      thick tee pointing right
           WACS_T_PLUS       U+254b    +         N      thick large plus
           WACS_T_RTEE       U+2523    +         U      thick tee pointing left
           WACS_T_TTEE       U+2533    +         W      thick tee pointing down
           WACS_T_ULCORNER   U+250f    +         L      thick upper left corner
           WACS_T_URCORNER   U+2513    +         K      thick upper right corner
           WACS_T_VLINE      U+2503    |         X      thick vertical line

           and for double lines (acsc "A" through "I", plus "R" and "Y"):

                             Unicode   ASCII     acsc
           ACS Name          Default   Default   Char   Glyph Name
           ------------------------------------------------------------------------
           WACS_D_BTEE       U+2569    +         H      double tee pointing up
           WACS_D_HLINE      U+2550    -         R      double horizontal line
           WACS_D_LLCORNER   U+255a    +         D      double lower left corner
           WACS_D_LRCORNER   U+255d    +         A      double lower right corner
           WACS_D_LTEE       U+2560    +         F      double tee pointing right
           WACS_D_PLUS       U+256c    +         E      double large plus
           WACS_D_RTEE       U+2563    +         G      double tee pointing left
           WACS_D_TTEE       U+2566    +         I      double tee pointing down
           WACS_D_ULCORNER   U+2554    +         C      double upper left corner
           WACS_D_URCORNER   U+2557    +         B      double upper right corner
           WACS_D_VLINE      U+2551    |         Y      double vertical line

           Unicode's  descriptions  for  these  characters  differs  slightly from
           ncurses, by introducing the term "light"  (along  with  less  important
           details).   Here are its descriptions for the normal, thick, and double
           horizontal lines:

           o   U+2500 BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT HORIZONTAL

           o   U+2501 BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY HORIZONTAL

           o   U+2550 BOX DRAWINGS DOUBLE HORIZONTAL

## RETURN VALUE

           These functions return OK on success and ERR on failure.

           In ncurses, these functions fail if

           o   the curses screen has not been initialized,

           o   (for functions taking a WINDOW pointer  argument)  win  is  a  null
               pointer,

           o   wrapping  to  a new line is impossible because scrollok(3x) has not
               been called on win (or stdscr, as applicable) when writing  to  its
               bottom right location is attempted, or

           o   it  is  not  possible  to  add  a  complete character at the cursor
               position.

           Functions prefixed with "mv" first perform cursor movement and fail  if
           the position (y, x) is outside the window boundaries.

## NOTES

           add_wch,  mvadd_wch,  mvwadd_wch,  and echo_wchar may be implemented as
           macros.

## EXTENSIONS

           The  symbols  WACS_S3,  WACS_S7,  WACS_LEQUAL,  WACS_GEQUAL,   WACS_PI,
           WACS_NEQUAL,   and  WACS_STERLING  are  not  standard.   However,  many
           publicly  available   terminfo   entries   include   acs_chars   (acsc)
           capabilities  in which their key characters (pryz{|}) are embedded, and
           a second-hand list of their character descriptions has come  to  light.
           The ncurses developers invented WACS-prefixed names for them.

## PORTABILITY

           Applications employing ncurses extensions should condition their use on
           the visibility of the NCURSES_VERSION preprocessor macro.

           These functions are described in X/Open Curses Issue 4.   It  specifies
           no error conditions for them.

           The  defaults specified for forms-drawing characters apply in the POSIX
           locale.  X/Open Curses makes it clear that the WACS_ symbols should  be
           defined  as  a  pointer  to  cchar_t  data,  e.g., in the discussion of
           border_set.  A few implementations are problematic:

           o   NetBSD curses defines the symbols as a wchar_t within a cchar_t.

           o   HP-UX curses equates some of the  ACS_  symbols  to  the  analogous
               WACS_  symbols  as  if  the ACS_ symbols were wide characters.  The
               misdefined symbols are the arrows and other symbols which  are  not
               used for line-drawing.

           X/Open  Curses  does  not  specify  symbols for thick- or double-lines.
           SVr4 curses implementations defined their line-drawing symbols in terms
           of  intermediate symbols.  ncurses extends those symbols, providing new
           definitions not found in SVr4 implementations.

           Not all  Unicode-capable  terminals  provide  support  for  VT100-style
           alternate character sets (i.e., the acsc_chars (acsc) capability), with
           their corresponding line-drawing characters.   X/Open  Curses  did  not
           address the aspect of integrating Unicode with line-drawing characters.
           Existing implementations of System V curses (AIX, HP-UX,  Solaris)  use
           only  the  acsc_chars (acsc) character-mapping to provide this feature.
           As a result, those  implementations  can  use  only  single-byte  line-
           drawing  characters.   ncurses  5.3  (2002) provided a table of Unicode
           values to solve these problems.  NetBSD curses incorporated that  table
           in 2010.

           ncurses   uses   the  Unicode  values  instead  of  the  terminal  type
           description's acsc_chars (acsc) mapping as discussed in ncurses(3x) for
           the  environment  variable  NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS.   In contrast, for the
           same cases, the line-drawing characters described in addch(3x) will use
           only the ASCII default values.

           Having  Unicode available does not solve all of the problems with line-
           drawing for curses:

           o   The closest Unicode equivalents to the VT100 graphics S1,  S3,  S7,
               and  S9 frequently are not displayed at the regular intervals which
               the terminal used.

           o   The lantern is a special case.  It originated with  the  AT&T  4410
               terminal  in the early 1980s.  There is no accessible documentation
               depicting the lantern symbol on the AT&T terminal.

               Lacking documentation, most readers assume that a storm lantern was
               intended.  But there are several possibilities, all with problems.

               Unicode  6.0  (2010)  does provide two lantern symbols: U+1F383 and
               U+1F3EE.  Those were not available  in  2002,  and  are  irrelevant
               since they lie outside the Basic Multilingual Plane and as a result
               are unavailable on many terminals.  They are not storm lanterns, in
               any case.

               Most storm lanterns have a tapering glass chimney (to guard against
               tipping); some have a wire grid protecting the chimney.

               For the tapering appearance,  U+2603 was adequate.   In  use  on  a
               terminal, no one can tell what the image represents.  Unicode calls
               it a snowman.

               Others have suggested these alternatives: <section> U+00A7 (section
               mark),  <Theta>  U+0398 (theta), <Phi> U+03A6 (phi), <delta> U+03B4
               (delta),  U+2327 (x in a rectangle),  U+256C (forms double vertical
               and horizontal), and  U+2612 (ballot box with x).

### Complex Characters

           The  complex  character  type  cchar_t  can  store  more  than one wide
           character (wchar_t).  X/Open Curses does not mention this  possibility,
           specifying  behavior  only  where  wch  is  a  single character, either
           spacing or non-spacing.

           ncurses assumes that wch is constructed using setcchar(3x), and in turn
           that the result

           o   contains at most one spacing character at the beginning of its list
               of wide characters, and zero or more non-spacing characters, or

           o   holds one non-spacing character.

           In the latter case, ncurses  adds  the  non-spacing  character  to  the
           active complex character.

## HISTORY

           X/Open  Curses Issue 4 (1995) initially specified these functions.  The
           System V  Interface  Definition  (SVID)  Version 4  of  the  same  year
           specified  functions named waddwch (and the usual variants), echowchar,
           and wechowchar.  These were later additions to SVr4.x, not appearing in
           the  first SVr4 (1989).  They differed from X/Open's later wadd_wch and
           wecho_wchar in that they each took an argument of type wchar_t  instead
           of cchar_t.  SVID defined no  WACS_ symbols.

           X/Open  Curses  Issue 4  also  defined  many  of  the  WACS_ constants,
           excepting  WACS_GEQUAL,  WACS_LEQUAL,  WACS_NEQUAL,  WACS_PI,  WACS_S3,
           WACS_S7,  and  WACS_STERLING;  and  those  for drawing thick and double
           lines.

           ncurses 5.3 (2002) furnished the remaining WACS_ constants.

## SEE ALSO

           curs_addch(3x) describes comparable functions of the ncurses library in
           its non-wide-character configuration.

           curses(3x),   curs_addwstr(3x),   curs_add_wchstr(3x),   curs_attr(3x),
           curs_bkgrnd(3x), curs_clear(3x),  curs_getcchar(3x),  curs_outopts(3x),
           curs_refresh(3x), curs_variables(3x), putwc(3)

    ncurses 6.5                       2025-08-16                  curs_add_wch(3x)