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 (currently) top-ranked answer (with the ActiveState code) is overly complicated. I don't see a reason to use classes when a mere function should suffice. Below are two implementations that accomplish the same thing but with more readable code.

Both of these implementations:

1. work just fine in Python 2 or Python 3
2. work on Windows, OSX, and Linux
3. read just one byte (i.e., they don't wait for a newline)
4. don't depend on any external libraries
5. are self-contained (no code outside of the function definition)

Version 1: readable and simple

def getChar():
    try:
        # for Windows-based systems
        import msvcrt # If successful, we are on Windows
        return msvcrt.getch()

    except ImportError:
        # for POSIX-based systems (with termios & tty support)
        import tty, sys, termios  # raises ImportError if unsupported

        fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
        oldSettings = termios.tcgetattr(fd)

        try:
            tty.setcbreak(fd)
            answer = sys.stdin.read(1)
        finally:
            termios.tcsetattr(fd, termios.TCSADRAIN, oldSettings)

        return answer

Version 2: avoid repeated imports and exception handling:

[EDIT] I missed one advantage of the ActiveState code. If you plan to read characters multiple times, that code avoids the (negligible) cost of repeating the Windows import and the ImportError exception handling on Unix-like systems. While you probably should be more concerned about code readability than that negligible optimization, here is an alternative (it is similar to Louis's answer, but getChar() is self-contained) that functions the same as the ActiveState code and is more readable:

def getChar():
    # figure out which function to use once, and store it in _func
    if "_func" not in getChar.__dict__:
        try:
            # for Windows-based systems
            import msvcrt # If successful, we are on Windows
            getChar._func=msvcrt.getch

        except ImportError:
            # for POSIX-based systems (with termios & tty support)
            import tty, sys, termios # raises ImportError if unsupported

            def _ttyRead():
                fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
                oldSettings = termios.tcgetattr(fd)

                try:
                    tty.setcbreak(fd)
                    answer = sys.stdin.read(1)
                finally:
                    termios.tcsetattr(fd, termios.TCSADRAIN, oldSettings)

                return answer

            getChar._func=_ttyRead

    return getChar._func()

Example code that exercises either of the getChar() versions above:

from __future__ import print_function # put at top of file if using Python 2

# Example of a prompt for one character of input
promptStr   = "Please give me a character:"
responseStr = "Thank you for giving me a '{}'."
print(promptStr, end="\n> ")
answer = getChar()
print("\n")
print(responseStr.format(answer))