Keyboard input

this question should be posted in the "for beginners" forum. Anyway if you want "raw" input in win32 OS you should check a library called DirectInput that is part of the biggest DirectX.

If you only wish to check if the ESC key is down I think that initiating DirectInput is overkill. Instead, I would advice you to use this call:

if( 0x80 & GetAsyncKeyState( VK_ESCAPE ) )	// Escape key is down

You can get additional information at this page: GetAsyncKeyState Function

Don't forget to #include

Or use windows messages for WM_KEYDOWN's or use SDL's input handler, or....

In short, there's no standard way to do this in C++, akin to reading a character.