Editing Curses (programming library) (section)

{{Short description|Terminal control library enabling construction of text user interfaces}}
{{lowercase|title=curses (programming library)}}
{{Infobox software
| name                   = curses
| logo                   = Termapi.svg
| screenshot             = Fmli lu.PNG
| caption                = Live Upgrade (lu) command, built upon FMLI{{discuss|FMLI example}} which uses Curses
| developer              = [[Ken Arnold]]
| released               = 1978<ref>{{cite web |url=https://episodiccontentmag.com/2016/06/17/rogue_chapter3 |title=Procedural Dungeons of Doom: The Making of Rogue – Chapter 3 |author=Craddock, David L. |date=June 17, 2016 |access-date=May 18, 2023}}</ref>
| latest release version = 
| latest release date    = 1995
| programming language   = [[C (programming language)|C]]
| genre                  = [[Widget toolkit]]
| license                = 
}}

'''curses''' is a [[Computer terminal|terminal]] control [[Library (computer science)|library]] for [[Unix-like]] systems, enabling the construction of [[text user interface]] (TUI) applications.

The name is a pun on the term "[[cursor (computers)|cursor]] optimization". It is a library of functions that manage an application's display on character-cell terminals (e.g., [[VT100]]).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html|title=NCURSES - Frequently Asked Questions|author=Thomas E. Dickey}}</ref>

[[ncurses]] is the approved replacement for [[4.4BSD]] classic curses.{{cn|date=November 2024}}