help for using msvcrt.kbhit() with Python 2.3 editors?

[Mark Hammond]

dbrown2 at yahoo.com wrote:

> I'm having some trouble using kbhit inside the editor enviroments. I'm
> using win2000 with Python2.3 and win32all v157 versions.
> 
> Any pointer on how this should be handled would be appreciated.  Is
> there another non-blocking way to detect a key press?
> 
> Here's the code that is causing the trouble.  If I run this by
> double-clicking then it works as expected.  But if I run from IDLE or
> PythonWin it basically never returns. msvcrt.kbhit() always returns 0
> as far as I can tell by adding print statements.  I can't confirm it
> but I seem to recall this worked at least with the PythonWin editor
> environment under my previous Python 2.2 setup.
> 
> ###########
> import serial   # access to serial port
> import time     # sleep command
> import msvcrt   # detect keyboard key press events
> 
> ser = serial.Serial(0, 4800, timeout=0.25)
> data = ''
> while not msvcrt.kbhit():
>     buf =  ser.read(10)
>     if buf <> '': print buf
>     #time.sleep(1)
>     data = data + buf # concatenate buf onto data
> ser.close()
> ###########

This will not work for Windows programs.  Keystrokes are delivered to 
GUI programs via windows messages, not via stream type functions.  Thus, 
having a GUI program with no existing message loop detecting key presses 
is quite difficult.

Mark.