Python input single character without enter

ArgoLake picture ArgoLake · Jan 3, 2015 · Viewed 12.7k times · Source

What I am trying to do is make a simple pi memorization game in Python. What I need is a way to get input from the user without having to press 'enter' after every character. It sounds like I need something like getch, but I can't get it to work. I got a getch-like function from here: https://gist.github.com/chao787/2652257#file-getch-py. I don't really understand anything that's in there. When I do 'x = getch.getch()' it says "AttributeError: '_Getch' object has no attribute 'getch'". It looks like msvcrt can do it for Windows, but I have a Mac. It also looks like curses is a thing that has getch, but it says I need to do initscr first, but then I get the error "File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/lib/python3.4/curses/__init__.py", line 30, in initscr fd=_sys.__stdout__.fileno()) _curses.error: setupterm: could not find terminal".

This is my file just using input, where you would have to press enter every time (I actually put in 1000 digits, not an ellipsis).

pi = '3.1415926535...'


def main():
    print('Welcome to PiGame!')
    pigame()
    while True:
        yn = input('Play again? y/n ')
        if yn == 'y':
            pigame()
        else: return


def pigame():

    n=0

    print('Go!')


    while n<=1000:
        x = input()
        if x == pi[n]:
            n += 1
        else:
            print('I\'m sorry. The next digit was '+pi[n]+'.')
            print('You got to '+str(n)+' digits!')
            return
    print('You got to 1000! Hooray!')

Answer

Luke Taylor picture Luke Taylor · Jan 26, 2015

You can define your own version of getch using the termios, sys and tty packages:

def getch():
    import termios
    import sys, tty
    def _getch():
        fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
        old_settings = termios.tcgetattr(fd)
        try:
            tty.setraw(fd)
            ch = sys.stdin.read(1)
        finally:
            termios.tcsetattr(fd, termios.TCSADRAIN, old_settings)
        return ch
    return _getch()