Polling from keyboard

[sturnfie@gmail.com]

I am trying to find a way to poll the keyboard. In my searching, I
have found that Windows users are given the msvcrt module. Is there an
equivilant for Unix systems?

I am writing a p2p chat application, and would like to ideally approach
user input in a manner similar to the way I am using poll() to moniter
the sockets for events

thanks in advance

--
lucas

[Diez B. Roggisch]

Re: Polling from keyboard

sturnfie@gmail. com wrote:
[color=blue]
> I am trying to find a way to poll the keyboard. In my searching, I
> have found that Windows users are given the msvcrt module. Is there an
> equivilant for Unix systems?
>
> I am writing a p2p chat application, and would like to ideally approach
> user input in a manner similar to the way I am using poll() to moniter
> the sockets for events[/color]

I currently do that under Linux using /dev/input/*. However, that's for a
special case where we want several keyboards read simultaneously.

I guess what you want is a RAW-mode for your terminal, or alternatively the
event-system of your windowing system. Then you can get every keystroke.
But we need somewhat more information to be more helpful I fear.

diez

[Petr Jakes]

Re: Polling from keyboard

I am using following code which I have found on
http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/py4fun/ few months ago. It works well for my
purposes. Another way is to use Curses library.
HTH
Petr Jakes

#!/usr/local/bin/python
#
# t t y L i n u x . p y
#
# getLookAhead reads lookahead chars from the keyboard without
# echoing them. It still honors ^C etc
#
import termios, sys, time
if sys.version > "2.1" : TERMIOS = termios
else : import TERMIOS

def setSpecial () :
"set keyboard to read single chars lookahead only"
global oldSettings
fd = sys.stdin.filen o()
oldSettings = termios.tcgetat tr(fd)
new = termios.tcgetat tr(fd)
new[3] = new[3] & ~TERMIOS.ECHO # lflags
new[3] = new[3] & ~TERMIOS.ICANON # lflags
new[6][6] = '\000' # Set VMIN to zero for lookahead only
termios.tcsetat tr(fd, TERMIOS.TCSADRA IN, new)

def setNormal () :
"restore previous keyboard settings"
global oldSettings
fd = sys.stdin.filen o()
termios.tcsetat tr(fd, TERMIOS.TCSADRA IN, oldSettings)

def readLookAhead () :
"read max 1 chars (arrow escape seq) from look ahead"
return sys.stdin.read( 1)