c - Add a Timeout for getchar()

Question

I need to add a timeout function for getchar() in my program.

What do I do so that when my program reaches the instruction getchar(), it will only wait for a certain amount of time for the user to make a keystroke and if the user does not make a keystroke within the given time limit, the program will "skip" the getchar()?

The operating system does not support the conio.h library so kbhit is not an option.

Answer 1

This is usually achieved by using select() on stdin. Another solution would be using alarm() and a dummy SIGALRM handler to interrupt the getchar() call (only working on POSIX systems though).