How to read a single character from the user?

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()).

Answer 1

sys.stdin.read(1)

will basically read 1 byte from STDIN.

If you must use the method which does not wait for the \n you can use this code as suggested in previous answer:

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()

(taken from http://code.activestate.com/recipes/134892/)