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

Try using this: http://home.wlu.edu/~levys/software/kbhit.py It's non-blocking (that means that you can have a while loop and detect a key press without stopping it) and cross-platform.

import os

# Windows
if os.name == 'nt':
    import msvcrt

# Posix (Linux, OS X)
else:
    import sys
    import termios
    import atexit
    from select import select


class KBHit:

    def __init__(self):
        '''Creates a KBHit object that you can call to do various keyboard things.'''

        if os.name == 'nt':
            pass

        else:

            # Save the terminal settings
            self.fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
            self.new_term = termios.tcgetattr(self.fd)
            self.old_term = termios.tcgetattr(self.fd)

            # New terminal setting unbuffered
            self.new_term[3] = (self.new_term[3] & ~termios.ICANON & ~termios.ECHO)
            termios.tcsetattr(self.fd, termios.TCSAFLUSH, self.new_term)

            # Support normal-terminal reset at exit
            atexit.register(self.set_normal_term)


    def set_normal_term(self):
        ''' Resets to normal terminal.  On Windows this is a no-op.
        '''

        if os.name == 'nt':
            pass

        else:
            termios.tcsetattr(self.fd, termios.TCSAFLUSH, self.old_term)


    def getch(self):
        ''' Returns a keyboard character after kbhit() has been called.
            Should not be called in the same program as getarrow().
        '''

        s = ''

        if os.name == 'nt':
            return msvcrt.getch().decode('utf-8')

        else:
            return sys.stdin.read(1)


    def getarrow(self):
        ''' Returns an arrow-key code after kbhit() has been called. Codes are
        0 : up
        1 : right
        2 : down
        3 : left
        Should not be called in the same program as getch().
        '''

        if os.name == 'nt':
            msvcrt.getch() # skip 0xE0
            c = msvcrt.getch()
            vals = [72, 77, 80, 75]

        else:
            c = sys.stdin.read(3)[2]
            vals = [65, 67, 66, 68]

        return vals.index(ord(c.decode('utf-8')))


    def kbhit(self):
        ''' Returns True if keyboard character was hit, False otherwise.
        '''
        if os.name == 'nt':
            return msvcrt.kbhit()

        else:
            dr,dw,de = select([sys.stdin], [], [], 0)
            return dr != []

An example to use this:

import kbhit

kb = kbhit.KBHit()

while(True): 
    print("Key not pressed") #Do something
    if kb.kbhit(): #If a key is pressed:
        k_in = kb.getch() #Detect what key was pressed
        print("You pressed ", k_in, "!") #Do something
kb.set_normal_term()

Or you could use the getch module from PyPi. But this would block the while loop