ins_wch(3NCURSES)

💖 ins_wch — bestie, we're inserting a complex character ✨

(that's ins_wch, wins_wch, mvins_wch, mvwins_wch from the 3NCURSES library calls crew 🎀)

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🌸 NAME 🌸

ins_wch, wins_wch, mvins_wch, mvwins_wch — insert a curses complex character in a window 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

#include <curses.h>

int ins_wch(const cchar_t * wch);
int wins_wch(WINDOW * win, const cchar_t * wch);
int mvins_wch(int y, int x, const cchar_t * wch);
int mvwins_wch(WINDOW * win, int y, int x, const cchar_t * wch);

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so wins_wch inserts the curses complex character wch at the cursor position in the window win. iconic

the character that was previously at the cursor — and literally everything to its right — moves one cell to the right 🫶. and the character that used to be the rightmost one on the line? bestie, it's discarded 💀 gone, not coming back.

and here's the thing that makes it different from add_wch(3NCURSES): wins_wch does not advance the cursor. not even a little. nope. stay put, king 👑

ncurses(3NCURSES) is where you go to read about the variants of this function, iykyk.

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💜 RETURN VALUE 💜

these functions return OK when things go right and ERR when they don't 😭

in ncurses specifically, they return ERR if:

• the curses screen has not been initialized, or
• (only for the functions that take a WINDOW pointer argument) win is a null pointer 🚫

also! the functions prefixed with "mv" first do cursor movement, and they fail if the position (y, x) is outside the window boundaries. no cap.

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🎀 NOTES 🎀

• ins_wch, mvins_wch, and mvwins_wch may be implemented as macros 👀
• curses does not necessarily employ the terminal's insert_character (ich1) capability to achieve insertion. it might, it might not. that's just the vibe.

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🌈 PORTABILITY 🌈

X/Open Curses Issue 4 describes these functions 💖. it specifies no error conditions for them. wild, right?

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👑 HISTORY 👑

X/Open Curses Issue 4 (1995) initially specified these functions ⭐

the System V Interface Definition Version 4 of the same year specified a function named winswch (plus the usual variants). this was a later addition to SVr4.x — it did not appear in the first SVr4 (1989). 🙈

it differed from X/Open's later wins_wch in that it took an argument of type chtype instead of cchar_t. subtle but real 💅

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• insch(3NCURSES) — describes comparable functions in the non-wide-character curses configuration
• ncurses(3NCURSES)
• terminfo(5)

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this was ncurses 6.6, dated 2025-10-20 — go insert some complex characters, you absolute main character 💖✨🎀