curs_deleteln(3)

curs_deleteln3

Delete or insert lines in a curses window

Usage

#include <curses.h>

int deleteln(void); int wdeleteln(WINDOW * win);

int insertln(void); int winsertln(WINDOW * win);

int insdelln(int n); int winsdelln(WINDOW * win, int n);

Overview

wdeleteln deletes the line at the cursor in win; all lines below it move up one line. curses then fills the bottom line of win with the background character configured by wbkgdset(3X) (wide-character API users: wbkgrndset(3X)). The cursor position does not change.

winsertln inserts a new, empty line of characters above the line at the cursor in win, shifting the existing lines down by one. The content of the window's bottom line is lost; curses fills the new line with the background character. The cursor position does not change.

winsdelln inserts or deletes n lines in win as n is positive or negative, respectively, as if by repeatedly calling winsertln or wdeleteln. winsdelln(..., 0) performs no operation.

Return value

These functions return OK on success and ERR on failure.

In ncurses, they fail if win is NULL.

Notes

All of these functions except winsdelln may be implemented as macros.

These functions do not require the terminal to possess hardware line deletion or insertion capabilities. Even if available, by default curses does not use them; see idlok(3X).

Portability

X/Open Curses Issue 4 describes these functions. It specifies no error conditions for them.

SVr4 describes a successful return value only as “an integer value other than ERR”.

Releases

70 releases since FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE; the text changed 13 times.

  1. 4.0
  2. 4.1–4.11
  3. 5.0–6.2
  4. 6.3
  5. 6.4
  6. 7.0
  7. 7.1–10.4
  8. 11.0–12.4
  9. 13.0–13.5
  10. 14.0–14.1
  11. 14.2–14.4
  12. 14.5
  13. 15.0
  14. 15.1–16.0

History

4BSD (1980) introduced deleteln, wdeleteln, insertln, and winsertln.

SVr3.1 (1987) added insdelln and winsdelln.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's man source.