pods::...:Cursor(3pm)

okay bestie, welcome to pods::...:Cursor(3pm) from the User Contributed Perl Documentation — this is the mouse cursor structure page, and it’s giving custom-cursor main character energy 🖱️💅

💖 NAME 💖

SDL::Cursor — Mouse cursor structure 🐭

🎀 CATEGORY 🎀

Core, Mouse, Structure — yes, it’s core, it’s mouse, it’s structure, it contains multitudes 💅✨

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

the short version, bestie:

my $cursor = SDL::Cursor->new(
    \@data,
    \@mask,
    $width,
    $height,
    $hotspot_left,
    $hotspot_top
);

SDL::Mouse::set_cursor($cursor);

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

The SDL::Cursor module handles mouse cursors and lets you use custom-made cursors. Heads up though: cursors can only be in black and white. No cap, that’s the whole color situation. 🖤🤍

✨ METHODS ✨

💅 new

my $cursor = SDL::Cursor->new(
    \@data, \@mask, $width, $height, $hotspot_left, $hotspot_top
);

Create a cursor using the specified data and mask, in MSB format. The cursor comes out in black and white according to this iconic little chart:

Data / Mask → resulting pixel on screen:

• 0 / 1 → White
• 1 / 1 → Black
• 0 / 0 → Transparent
• 1 / 0 → Inverted color if possible, black if not.

If you want to have color cursor, then this function is not for you, bestie. Instead, you should hide the cursor with SDL::Mouse::show_cursor(SDL_DISABLE). Then in your main loop, when you draw graphics, draw a "SDL::Surface" at the location of the mouse cursor.

Example:

use SDL;
use SDL::Video;
use SDL::Mouse;
use SDL::Cursor;

SDL::init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO);
SDL::Video::set_video_mode(640, 480, 16, SDL_SWSURFACE);

my @data = (
    0b00000000,
    0b00111100,
    0b01111110,
    0b01111110,
    0b01111110,
    0b01111110,
    0b00111100,
    0b00000000
);
my @mask = (
    0b00111100,
    0b01111110,
    0b11100111,
    0b11000011,
    0b11000011,
    0b11100111,
    0b01111110,
    0b00111100
);
my $cursor = SDL::Cursor->new(\@data, \@mask, 8, 8, 0, 0);
sleep(1);

SDL::Mouse::set_cursor($cursor);
sleep(5);

The width of cursors works in groups of 8. If the width is above 8, twice the amount of elements in @data and @mask are required. If the width is above 16, three times are required, and so on. For example, if you wanted a 9 pixel crosshair you might do the following:

my @data = (
    0b00001000,0b00000000,
    0b00001000,0b00000000,
    0b00001000,0b00000000,
    0b00001000,0b00000000,
    0b11111111,0b10000000,
    0b00001000,0b00000000,
    0b00001000,0b00000000,
    0b00001000,0b00000000,
    0b00001000,0b00000000,
);
my @mask = @data;

my $cursor = SDL::Cursor->new(\@data, \@mask, 9, 9, 4, 4);

The hotspot is offset by 4 pixels because a crosshair clicks from the center instead of the top left.

🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

See "AUTHORS" in SDL — the whole crew is there, go say hi 💖

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• perl SDL::Mouse — your next stop, iykyk

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and that’s the page, bestie! source/version: perl v5.42.3 · date: 2026-08-19 · page: pods::...:Cursor(3pm) — mwah, bye 💜🦋