How to cancel RETURN keystroke with windows.h? Or set it to “not pressed”?

[ribohe94]

I'm a beginner in C++, and I'm making a scrolling menu console application. Everything works as it's supposed to work, but the problem is that when I press the RETURN key, it registers it very quickly and it ends up registering 2 or 3 keystrokes, causing in to select the first option in the next menu.

I want to find a way to cancel a keystroke at the start of a function so those extra keystrokes are nulled out or canceled at the start of every function.

I have been searching in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms646314%28v=vs.85%29.aspx but i can't seem to find the proper function. I found that the function ReadConsoleInput might be helpful but I'm not sure how to use it properly in this situation.

here's a part of my code. Any help would be very helpful, thanks!

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <windows.h>

using namespace std;

    string Menu[3] = {"Start Game", "Options", "Exit"};
    int pointer = 0;

    while(true)
    {
        system("cls");

        SetConsoleTextAttribute(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), 15);
        cout << "Main Menu\n\n";

        for (int i = 0; i < 3; ++i)
        {
            if (i == pointer)
            {
                SetConsoleTextAttribute(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), 11);
                cout << Menu[i] << endl;
            }
            else
            {
                SetConsoleTextAttribute(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), 15);
                cout << Menu[i] << endl;
            }
        }

        while(true)
        {
            if (GetAsyncKeyState(VK_UP) != 0)
            {
                pointer -= 1;
                if (pointer == -1)
                {
                    pointer = 2;
                }
                break;
            }
            else if (GetAsyncKeyState(VK_DOWN) != 0)
            {
                pointer += 1;
                if (pointer == 3)
                {
                    pointer = 0;
                }
                break;
            }
            else if (GetAsyncKeyState(VK_RETURN) != 0)
            {
                switch (pointer)
                {
                    case 0:
                    {
                        startNewGame();
                    } break;
                    case 1:
                    {
                        options();
                    } break;
                    case 2:
                    {
                        return 0;
                    } break;
                }
                break;
            }
        }

        Sleep(150);
    }

    return 0;