How to make the waiting for a keypress to occur in parallel with the data update?

Question

C++ / C#

I need to implement a simple chat emulator. To do this, you need to update the message buffer in a loop and, if there is a new one, display it on the screen. At the same time, you need to be able to enter a message yourself and put it in the buffer, as well as the ability to exit the loop, for example, by pressing Esc.
The principle should be like this:

while(1)
{
      //если есть новое сообщение, вывести его на экран
     //если пользователь вводит сообщение (или нажимает Esc), обработать это действие
     //иначе, перейти к след. итерации
}

Variants like getch(), scanf() stop the loop, regardless of whether the user wants to enter something. Please tell me how to solve this problem.

Answer 1

All I needed was the kbhit() function.

Answer 2

Multi-threading will save you.
Here it’s still over to look at what you draw the GUI with, maybe you can somehow implement it in it.

Answer 3

i.e. you need to run a parallel process in the background that catches keystrokes and calls a function when esc is pressed?
I haven't tried but found OpenMP https://software.intel.com/ru-ru/blogs/2011/11/21/...