Accepting arrow keys as input in if statements

[ZacharyGirot]

I am a junior in high School and taking a c++ coding class. Our first assignment is to make a text based game we are allowed to use anything as input but the teacher only told us how to accept text. How would I make it so that you can press your arrow keys to say which way you would like to go within an if statement?

instead of this;
string PlayerAnswer;
cin >> PlayerAnswer;
if (PlayerAnswer == RIGHT)
cout << ("storyline") endl;
else (PlayerAnswer == LEFT)
cout << ("storyline") endl;

That is how we were shown to do it, we are using visual studio 2017 in class and on my gaming notebook at home in case that matters.

I want to swap the PlayerAnswer out for a command to take input from the arrow keys. Would the way to do keyboard inputs be any different for the nested ifs?

Thanks for the help I don't have to do with arrow keys but my teacher said it would be fine if I figured out how to and implemented it also I just want to learn how to do it.

[tpb]

The arrow keys (and function keys and some others) are special in that they send more than one "char" per keypress. I don't run Windows, so I don't know if it sends two chars or three.

So try running this program four times. Each time, press a different arrow key. What results do you get for each arrow key?

#include <iostream>
#include <conio.h>
using namespace std;

int main() {
    int ch;
    ch = _getch();
    cout << ch << '\n';
    ch = _getch();
    cout << ch << '\n';
    ch = _getch();
    cout << ch << '\n';
}

[Tett]

I'm a begginer so im just here to observe but i've already tried it.
up=224,72
right=224,77
down=224,80
left=224,75

[tpb]

Try this and see if it prints the correct directions for the arrows. Hit q (or Ctrl-C) to stop.

#include <iostream>
#include <conio.h>
using namespace std;

int main() {
    bool loop = true;
    while (loop) {
        int ch = getch();
        if (ch == 224) {
            ch = getch();
            switch (ch) {
            case 72: cout << "up\n";    break;
            case 80: cout << "down\n";  break;
            case 77: cout << "right\n"; break;
            case 75: cout << "left\n";  break;
            default: cout << "unknown\n";
            }
        }
        else {
            cout << char(ch) << '\n';
            if (char(ch) == 'q')
                loop = false;
        }
    }
}

[Tett]

It works

[tpb]

Good. Thanks for trying it.