Never mind, I was a bit confused since I'm far more experienced with C++. I was looking for a getch() function for Linux in conio.h but couldn't find one so I checked for an alternative, I didn't realize the alternative was meant for C++. I'm now using a snippet of code which contains that function and all requirements. Thanks!
For clarification, there is no iostream.h in C. The only IO-based header is stdio.h.
getch() can be used from the curses library, although I think there's minor and subtle differences between how it will work from general CONIO implementations.