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

Also worth trying is the readchar library, which is in part based on the ActiveState recipe mentioned in other answers.

Installation:

pip install readchar

Usage:

import readchar
print("Reading a char:")
print(repr(readchar.readchar()))
print("Reading a key:")
print(repr(readchar.readkey()))

Tested on Windows and Linux with Python 2.7.

On Windows, only keys which map to letters or ASCII control codes are supported (Backspace, Enter, Esc, Tab, Ctrl+letter). On GNU/Linux (depending on exact terminal, perhaps?) you also get Insert, Delete, Pg Up, Pg Dn, Home, End and F n keys... but then, there's issues separating these special keys from an Esc.

Caveat: Like with most (all?) answers in here, signal keys like Ctrl+C, Ctrl+D and Ctrl+Z are caught and returned (as '\x03', '\x04' and '\x1a' respectively); your program can be come difficult to abort.