Question

In the doDebuggingMenu function below, I am getting the user input using the raw_input function (using Python 2.6). This function waits until the user enters a char sequence and presses enter. Neverthless, I would like to allow the user to exit the application by simply pressing the ESC button in the keyboard without having to press enter (Please see the last elif block in the function where I intend to implement this behaviour). For other menu options the user should be able to press the enter button because there are options in the menu that requires entering a two digit number. My question here is how can I provide this combined behaviour in the following function? Thanks

def doDebugingMenu():
    while(1):
        printDebugingMenu()

        char = raw_input("\nPlease, enter your selection in the debugging menu...:")       

        if  char == '1':
           doSetTraceLevelManually()   
        elif  char == '2':
           doSetTraceDomain() 
        elif  char == '3':
           doPrintLevels()                                            
        elif  char == '4':
           doPrintConfig()
        elif  char == '5':
           doPrintProfile()
        elif  char == '6':
           doPrintMap()
        elif  char == '7':
          doPrintCounters()
        elif(char == '8'):
          doRaiseAlarm()
        elif(char == '9'):
          doClearAlarm()       
        elif(char == '10'):
          doUpdateAlarm()
        elif(char == '11'):
          doShutdown()         
        #HERE I need to catch if ESC pressed            
        elif  char == 'ESC':
          break  

def printDebugingMenu():
       print "\n######################################"
       print "#                MENU                 #"
       print "######################################"
       print "1.  setTraceLevel( traceLevel )"
       print "2.  setTraceDomain()"
       print "3.  PRINT Trace Domain and levels"  
       print "4.  PRINT config"
       print "5.  PRINT profile config"
       print "6.  PRINT mapping config"
       print "7.  PRINT counters"  
       print "8.  Issue Alarm"
       print "9.  Remove Alarm"
       print "10. Update Alarm" 
       print "11. Shutdown" 
       print "EXIT: press ESC"

Answer 1

raw_input() is not what you need.

You need to process input character by character so you can detect ESC, function keys, etc. Maybe build your own input function that returns the text when you press ENTER but throws exceptions on other keys, but then you need to process backspaces, cursor movements, etc. You can find primitives in the curses module on Unices or msvcrt on Windows. It’s a lot of work. But then you have it and it’s reusable if you are writing lots of console based programs.

Normally, though, users are quite content to just use Ctrl-C if they want to exit the program and there is no need to complicate things. If you want something fancy write a GUI program. Up to you.

On a side note, that if … elif … elif block looks horribly non-pythonic. Take a look at this.