detect automatic key-repeats in curses

I'm writing a little text mode application using curses on Linux.

For keyboard input I use the curses functions. Key auto-repeats work, e.g. if I hold a key down I get multiple key events until I release the key again.

Is it also p开发者_StackOverflow中文版ossible to distinguish between real key events and those generated by the key repeat logic?

Background: The application is a little data-entry front-end where the user can modify integer numbers of certain parameters. In the long run the application will work without a standard keyboard. I will only have four buttons for data-entry: 'increase', 'decrease', 'ok' and 'cancel'.

Since the number ranges are large I'd like to know if the user holds down a key. If he does so I can scan faster through my numeric range by not incrementing my number by one but by 10 or maybe 100. If the user otoh taps the key the input method should be precise again and just increase/decrease the numbers by one.

Is this possible with the keyboard input functions of curses?

No - curses just receives keys from the terminal. If you really need it you could try to find out if the key repeats are automated or not by looking at the delay between each keypress. However, especially over remote connections, this might not be a good solution as the delay will be affected by network latency.

The best solution might be using UP/DOWN for small steps and PAGEUP/PAGEDOWN for large steps.