Reading the Device Status Report ANSI escape sequence reply

Your program is working but is waiting for an EOL character.

scanf is line oriented so it waits for a new line before processing. Try running your program and then hit the enter key.

The solution is to use something else that doesn't need a new line to read the input and then use sscanf to parse the values out.

You will also need to make stdin non-blocking or you won't get the input until the buffer is full or stdin is closed. See this question Making stdin non-blocking

You should also call fflush(stdout); after your printf to ensure it is actually written (printf is often line buffered so without a newline it may not flush the buffer).

I ask for the cursor position. If I do not have answer after 100ms (this is arbitrary) I suppose the console is not ansi.

/* This function tries to get the position of the cursor on the terminal. 
It can also be used to detect if the terminal is ANSI.
Return 1 in case of success, 0 otherwise.*/

int console_try_to_get_cursor_position(int* x, int *y)
{
    fd_set readset;
    int success = 0;
    struct timeval time;
    struct termios term, initial_term;

    /*We store the actual properties of the input console and set it as:
    no buffered (~ICANON): avoid blocking 
    no echoing (~ECHO): do not display the result on the console*/
    tcgetattr(STDIN_FILENO, &initial_term);
    term = initial_term;
    term.c_lflag &=~ICANON;
    term.c_lflag &=~ECHO;
    tcsetattr(STDIN_FILENO, TCSANOW, &term);

    //We request position
    print_escape_command("6n");
    fflush(stdout);

    //We wait 100ms for a terminal answer
    FD_ZERO(&readset);
    FD_SET(STDIN_FILENO, &readset);
    time.tv_sec = 0;
    time.tv_usec = 100000;

    //If it success we try to read the cursor value
    if (select(STDIN_FILENO + 1, &readset, NULL, NULL, &time) == 1) 
      if (scanf("\033[%d;%dR", x, y) == 2) success = 1;

    //We set back the properties of the terminal
    tcsetattr(STDIN_FILENO, TCSADRAIN, &initial_term);

    return success;
}