Question

Is there a way of reading one single character from the user input? For instance, they press one key at the terminal and it is returned (sort of like getch()). I know there’s a function in Windows for it, but I’d like something that is cross-platform.

Answer 1

Here’s a link to the ActiveState Recipes site that says how you can read a single character in Windows, Linux and OSX:

    getch()-like unbuffered character reading from stdin on both Windows and Unix

class _Getch:     """Gets a single character from standard input.  Does not echo to the screen."""     def __init__(self):         try:             self.impl = _GetchWindows()         except ImportError:             self.impl = _GetchUnix()      def __call__(self): return self.impl()   class _GetchUnix:     def __init__(self):         import tty, sys      def __call__(self):         import sys, tty, termios         fd = sys.stdin.fileno()         old_settings = termios.tcgetattr(fd)         try:             tty.setraw(sys.stdin.fileno())             ch = sys.stdin.read(1)         finally:             termios.tcsetattr(fd, termios.TCSADRAIN, old_settings)         return ch   class _GetchWindows:     def __init__(self):         import msvcrt      def __call__(self):         import msvcrt         return msvcrt.getch()   getch = _Getch()