C++ :: Detect Arrow Key Press For Linux Only

I'm trying to implement this on ubuntu, to compile and run only under ubuntu.

I found 100s of other attempts at answering the general question of arrow key press in c++. Nothing solid.

Some recommend using the Readline for the functionality I am trying to implement, but I need to stay clear of GNU licences if I can for this project. And some tips only work on projects for windows machines... for example the conio library.

For linux there may be the option of using the ncurses library which I will take a look at, but I am stubborn and want to implement this myself. It should be an easy straight forward thing to do, which is why I am a bit frustrated at the moment.

Here is my test code so far.

#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <termios.h>
#include <unistd.h>
using namespace std;
int main(void) {
char a;
stringstream ss;
string s;

[Code] ....

So! This works... 80% of the problem is solved. If you compile this, g++ under linux, ubuntu in my case, and run. Each keystroke reveals the correct key numbers.

q=113
w=119

when I click on the up key I get,

up = 279165

I thought, I can use this number is a if(int == '279165') to detect the up key.

I was not so lucky... this int is not behaving like an int!

So I modified the code to see it I could carry out an int operation on this number.

I added a 100000 to int i.

cout<< i + 100000;

Code:
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <termios.h>
#include <unistd.h>
using namespace std;
int main(void) {
char a;
stringstream ss;
string s;

[Code] .....

Compiling and running this, and pressing the UP key gives the following number.

100027100091100065

Some some sort of array, something like, [27][91][65].

I tried all ways to access these individual numbers, actually the third one for comparison purposes, but no luck.

For completeness sake I list the other arrows.

UP = [27][91][65]
DOWN = [27][91][66]
LEFT = [27][91][68]
RIGHT = [27][91][67]

A little further digging shows that these numbers are derived from the representation of a "multi-char" constant, the data type given when pressing special characters...

Now here is the main problem I have, I can find ANY decent documentation on how to handle and play with "multi-char" .