From: William James <w_a_x_man@...>
Date: 2007-08-26T07:00:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Newbie questions

On Aug 25, 3:05 pm, "Barr, Keith" <keith.b...@lmco.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I am new to using Ruby and I am writing my first real
> programs and I have something I was wonndering about:
>
> I have a menu that I would like users to respond to
> simply by entering a single character.  I have tried
> both STDIN.getc and gets, but both require a carriage
> return.  Is there a command I haven't found that will
> actively read STDIN to process a single character as
> soon as it is entered?

if RUBY_PLATFORM =~ /win32/
  require 'Win32API'
  Kbhit = Win32API.new("msvcrt", "_kbhit", [], 'I')
  Getch = Win32API.new("msvcrt", "_getch", [], 'I')
  def getkey
    sleep 0.01
    return nil if Kbhit.call.zero?
    c = Getch.call
    c = Getch.call + 256 if c.zero? || c == 0xE0
    c
  end
else
  def getkey
    select( [$stdin], nil, nil, 0.01 ) ?  c = $stdin.getc : c = nil
  end
end

5.times{
  begin end until key = getkey
  print key.chr
}