mark(3MENU)

✨ mark — get and set the menu mark string 💅

okay bestie, welcome to the mark(3MENU) glow-up. two lil functions, set_menu_mark and menu_mark, and they're literally the ones in charge of the lil prefix string that tells you which menu item is chosen. it's giving main character energy for your cursor. 🎀

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <menu.h>

int set_menu_mark(MENU *menu, const char *mark);
const char *menu_mark(const MENU *menu);

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so back in the day, some terminals were out here with no highlighting and no color capability 😭. like, zero glow. so the menu library had to mark the selected item in a menu with a prefix string instead — that's the whole vibe of this feature, and it's honestly iconic.

• set_menu_mark sets the mark string for the given menu. if you call set_menu_mark with a null menu item, it abolishes the mark string entirely. bye mark 🫶

heads up: changing the length of the mark string for a menu while the menu is posted is likely to produce unhelpful behavior. don't do it, bestie, that's not the moment.

• the default string is "-" (a dash). calling set_menu_mark with a non-NULL menu argument will change this default. ✨
• menu_mark returns the menu's mark string (or NULL if there is none). no cap.

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🦋 RETURN VALUE 🦋

menu_mark returns a pointer (which may be NULL). it does not set errno. it's chill like that.

set_menu_mark may return the following error codes:

• E_OK — the routine succeeded. slay. 👑
• E_BAD_ARGUMENT — routine detected an incorrect or out-of-range argument. 😬
• E_SYSTEM_ERROR — system error occurred (see errno(3)). 💀

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🌈 PORTABILITY 🌈

these routines emulate the System V menu library. they were not supported on Version 7 or BSD versions. so if you're on something ancient-ancient, this is not the page for you, sorry bestie 🙈.

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💜 AUTHORS 💜

Juergen Pfeifer. Manual pages and adaptation for new curses by Eric S. Raymond.

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• ncurses(3NCURSES)
• menu(3MENU)

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and that's the whole page, fr fr — get your mark, set your mark, don't resize it mid-post, periodt. 💖

this lil rewrite was brought to you by ncurses 6.6, dated 2024-12-28 — the original mark(3MENU) energy, just with way more sparkle 🧚✨