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

The ActiveState recipe quoted verbatim in two answers is over-engineered. It can be boiled down to this:

def _find_getch():
    try:
        import termios
    except ImportError:
        # Non-POSIX. Return msvcrt's (Windows') getch.
        import msvcrt
        return msvcrt.getch

    # POSIX system. Create and return a getch that manipulates the tty.
    import sys, tty
    def _getch():
        fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
        old_settings = termios.tcgetattr(fd)
        try:
            tty.setraw(fd)
            ch = sys.stdin.read(1)
        finally:
            termios.tcsetattr(fd, termios.TCSADRAIN, old_settings)
        return ch

    return _getch

getch = _find_getch()