keypressed() function

[robert]

pinkfloydhomer at gmail.com wrote:
> I need a function (blocking or non-blocking) that tells me if a key has
> been pressed (even before it has been released etc.). Also, I would of
> course like to know _which_ key has been pressed.
> 
> I know that this probably does not exist in the Python library already
> as a platform-independant abstraction (even though it probably could),
> but then I would at least like solutions that works on Windows and on
> Linux.
> 
> /David
> 

Its a terminal I/O function - not a platform function. E.g. On Win only in a rough console msvcrt.kbhit() does it. In PythonWin, IPython, Crust ... things are of course different. 
On regular Unix terminals you have the sys.stdin file:

sys.stdin.read(1)   #maybe in a thread and interthread-pass it to your main loop

or possibly trick with fcntl.fcntl(sys.stdin, fcntl.F_SETFL, os.O_NDELAY|os.O_NONBLOCK)

when nothing is on sys.stdin - you get immediately an IOError:

>>> sys.stdin.read(1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
IOError: [Errno 11] Resource temporarily unavailable


And see also other ioctl, termios, tty, cbreak, curses .. functions to get things early before \n  buffering depending on the terminal mode )


Robert