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4.9.1 The basics

A window can be created by calling the function newwin. It doesn’t draw anything on the screen initially. It allocates memory for a structure to manipulate the window and updates the structure with data regarding the window, like it’s size, position, etc.

The function newwin, like initscr, returns a #<window>. Just like the stdscr created by initscr, the window created by newwin can be used in any procedure that takes a window argument. The window returned by newwin needs to remain in scope for as long as the window is to be used. If it is garbage collected, the memory associated with the window will eventually be freed.

The memory associated with a window can be more quickly freed by explicitly calling delwin. It will deallocate the memory associated with the window structure. Any further attempts to then use that window will cause an error.