Reading a single character from stdin
by jenny on 10 July 2008 - 5:56pm in
Why there isn't an easier way of doing this, I have no idea. It'd be nice if this would work:
sys.stdin.read(1)...however, because the file is a tty, nothing gets read until the user hits enter.
Enter getch. It's a utility written by Danny Yoo and stolen from a posting I found on google: ASPN : Python Cookbook : getch()-like unbuffered character reading from stdin on both Windows and Unix.
Description:
A small utility class to read single characters from standard input, on both Windows and UNIX systems. It provides a getch() function-like instance.
Sounds about right, eh? To use it, copy the code below into a file called getch.py and make sure it's on your python search path. Then just do:
from getch import getch
ch = getch()Getch Utility
class _Getch:
"""Gets a single character from standard input. Does not echo to the screen."""
def __init__(self):
try:
self.impl = _GetchWindows()
except ImportError:
self.impl = _GetchUnix()
def __call__(self): return self.impl()
class _GetchUnix:
def __init__(self):
import tty, sys
def __call__(self):
import sys, tty, termios
fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
old_settings = termios.tcgetattr(fd)
try:
tty.setraw(sys.stdin.fileno())
ch = sys.stdin.read(1)
finally:
termios.tcsetattr(fd, termios.TCSADRAIN, old_settings)
return ch
class _GetchWindows:
def __init__(self):
import msvcrt
def __call__(self):
import msvcrt
return msvcrt.getch()
getch = _Getch()