getyx(3NCURSES)

💖 getyx(3NCURSES) — bestie edition 💖

okay so this is a library calls page from the 3NCURSES manual, and it's all about peeking at where your cursor is and how big your window is ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

getyx, getparyx, getbegyx, getmaxyx — grab your curses cursor position and window coordinates, no cap 💅

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

#include <curses.h>

void getyx(WINDOW *win, int y, int x);
void getbegyx(WINDOW *win, int y, int x);
void getmaxyx(WINDOW *win, int y, int x);

void getparyx(WINDOW *win, int y, int x);

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so these are macros, right, and they hand you the cursor position + the bounds info of a curses window win 🦋

• getyx drops win's cursor position into the variables y and x 📍
• getmaxyx drops win's maximum valid line and column dimensions into y and x, respectively 👑 and heads up, those are one more than the corresponding maximum positions (iykyk, that's just how it is)
• getbegyx does the same thing but for the position of win's origin relative to the screen's origin 🌈 and for stdscr those coordinates are always 0

and then if win is a subwindow (go read subwin(3NCURSES) bestie), getparyx puts the coordinates of its origin relative to its parent window into y and x — and if it's not a subwindow, it puts -1 into both 🫶

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💀 RETURN VALUE 💀

ngl there are no return values defined for these macros. so do NOT use them as the right-hand side of assignment statements. not a vibe, don't do it 🙈

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🧚 NOTES 🧚

• every single one of these interfaces is implemented as a macro ✨
• so you do not need an & operator before the variables y and x 💅

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🌈 PORTABILITY 🌈

• these macros are described in X/Open Curses Issue 4 📜
• ncurses also provides functions getbegy, getbegx, getcury, getcurx, getmaxy, getmaxx, getpary, and getparx for compatibility with System V curses that were not standardized; see legacy(3NCURSES) 🦋
• X/Open Curses doesn't address this, but many implementations expose members of the WINDOW structure holding values corresponding to these macros. do not rely on their availability — some implementations make WINDOW opaque (meaning they don't let you touch its members directly) 🙅
• and beyond the whole opaque-structure situation, the data in like-named members might not even mean the same thing across different implementations 😭 for example, the values of WINDOW._maxx and WINDOW._maxy in ncurses have long differed by one from some other implementations. the getmaxyx macro is the icon that hides this difference 👑

bestie this is the part where you go "oh so THAT's why I always use the macro" — yes. exactly that. periodt 💅

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⭐ HISTORY ⭐

• 4BSD (1980) introduced getyx 🎀
• SVr3 (1987) added getbegyx and getmaxyx 🌸
• SVr3.1 later that same year supplied getparyx ✨

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• ncurses(3NCURSES)
• legacy(3NCURSES)
• opaque(3NCURSES)

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this was ncurses 6.6, dated 2026-03-14, and yes this whole thing is literally titled getyx(3NCURSES) 💖 mwah, go get those coordinates 🎀