From: gotoken@... (GOTO Kentaro)
Date: 2001-01-11T14:52:03+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:9108] Re: Grabbing a char from the keyboard...

In message "[ruby-talk:9106] Grabbing a char from the keyboard..."
    on 01/01/11, "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> writes:
>How does one accept a character from the keyboard 
>as soon as it is pressed?

I often use system('stty raw') on UNIX. E.g,:

  stty_save = `stty -g`.chomp
  system("stty raw")
  begin
    print "quit by hitting q\r\n"
    while c = STDIN.getc and c != ?q
      p [c, c.chr]
      print "\r"
    end
  ensure
    system "stty", stty_save
  end

>I was hoping for some halfway platform-independent
>way...

I'm guessing there are not such ways. 

> I naively tried to set STDIN.sync=false, but it 
>didn't work (1.6.1 on W2K).

Shell's line buffer is under controle of tty.  So, you have to change
the terminal mode.

-- Gotoken