How Can I Read a Single Character from User Input Cross-Platform?

Getting a Single Character Input Cross-Platform

Reading a single character from the user's input is useful in various scenarios. To achieve this, you can utilize the following cross-platform solution:

The ActiveState Recipes site provides a comprehensive recipe that targets different operating systems:

• Windows:

  • Import the msvcrt module and use msvcrt.getch().

• Linux and OSX:

  • Set the standard input to raw mode using tty.setraw() to disable buffering.
  • Read a single character using sys.stdin.read(1).
  • Restore the original settings after reading the character.

The provided code snippet illustrates this implementation:

class _Getch:
    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()

Simply calling getch() will get you a single character without any buffering or echoing to the terminal.

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