Preserving stdin when using SDL
SDL has a "feature" where by it redirects stdin/out/err on certain platforms, including OS X. This presented problems since tcprose (an opengl network visualiser) depended on stdin for interprocess communication. After much mucking about, I arrived eventually at a 3 line solution to the problem:
First we duplicate the stdin file descriptor so when SDL calls close() on 0 the stream remains open.
int dup_fd = dup(0);Then we initalise SDL, and let it redirect stdin as it does.
SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO);Here is where we do our little trick: close 0, then duplicating the original stdin stream back onto 0, so scanf etc will continue to work.
close(0); dup2(dup_fd,0);And viola! We have stdin back again, no longer redirected. This solution won't work for window users though. See discussion at gmane.org. Cheers, Steve
posted by steve @ 10:10 PM
