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

I believe that this is one the most elegant solution.

import os

if os.name == 'nt':
    import msvcrt
    def getch():
        return msvcrt.getch().decode()
else:
    import sys, tty, termios
    fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
    old_settings = termios.tcgetattr(fd)
    def getch():
        try:
            tty.setraw(sys.stdin.fileno())
            ch = sys.stdin.read(1)
        finally:
            termios.tcsetattr(fd, termios.TCSADRAIN, old_settings)
        return ch

and then use it in the code:

if getch() == chr(ESC_ASCII_VALUE):
    print("ESC!")