key_shifts(3)

✨ key_shifts(3) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the Allegro manual 💖 this one's about key_shifts, and it's giving "tiny variable, huge power" energy, fr fr.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

key_shifts — a bitmask holding the current state of all the modifier keys, straight out of the Allegro game programming library 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

#include <allegro.h>

extern volatile int key_shifts;

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so key_shifts is a bitmask and it's tracking the current state of shift / ctrl / alt, the special Windows keys, and the accent escape characters. all of them. at once. main character energy honestly 👑

wherever possible, this value gets updated asynchronously — like, it just keeps itself fresh, no effort required, slay. BUT if keyboard_needs_poll() returns TRUE, then nope, you gotta manually call poll_keyboard() yourself to update it with the current input state. no skipping that, bestie, that's the vibe check 🫶

this bad boy can contain any of these flags:

• KB_SHIFT_FLAG
• KB_CTRL_FLAG
• KB_ALT_FLAG
• KB_LWIN_FLAG
• KB_RWIN_FLAG
• KB_MENU_FLAG
• KB_COMMAND_FLAG
• KB_SCROLOCK_FLAG
• KB_NUMLOCK_FLAG
• KB_CAPSLOCK_FLAG
• KB_INALTSEQ_FLAG
• KB_ACCENT1_FLAG
• KB_ACCENT2_FLAG
• KB_ACCENT3_FLAG
• KB_ACCENT4_FLAG

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🍓 Example 🍓

here's the little scenario, look at it, it ate:

if (key[KEY_W]) {
   if (key_shifts & KB_SHIFT_FLAG) {
      /* User is pressing shift + W. */
   } else {
      /* Hmmm... lower case W then. */
   }
}

like. it's checking if W is pressed, then peeking at whether shift is ALSO in the mix. iconic. lowercase W erasure otherwise 😭

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

install_keyboard(3), poll_keyboard(3), key(3), excamera(3), exkeys(3)

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heads up bestie: don't forget the poll_keyboard() thing when keyboard_needs_poll() says TRUE, or your modifier state is gonna be lowkey stale 🙈

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k bye, this was Allegro version 4.4.3 territory, page key_shifts(3), mwah 💋✨