I've heard that you can make your PC beep using just one line of code in C, like calling `printf("a")` within the main function, but when I tried it, I didn't hear any sound. Can someone explain why this might not be working on my system?
2 Answers
The thing is, C itself doesn't actually provide ways to produce sound directly. The escape sequence `a` is meant to trigger the ASCII "BEL" character, which should cause your terminal emulator to sound a beep. If your terminal isn't beeping, it may be due to its settings. For instance, in Windows, check under Defaults -> Advanced to see if the BEL sound is enabled.
I always thought `a` should trigger the PC speaker! Guess I need a retro system to test it out.
This trick might work fine on older PCs, but on modern systems, the beep often happens so quickly that it feels like nothing occurs. You could try putting it in a loop, but it may still not sound. Or, you could use something like DOSBox set to 1MHz to properly emulate the sound. Just a heads up, some shell environments disable the beep sound, so check your terminal settings too. Good luck!
I'm on Arch Linux using the Kitty terminal with Zsh, and I don't get any sound either.