readchar 0.6

Utilities to read single characters and key-strokes

VERSION	DOWNLOADS	TESTS	COVERAGE

Library to easily read single chars and key strokes.

Goal and Philosophy

Born as a python-inquirer requirement.

The idea is to have a portable way to read single characters and key-strokes.

Documentation

Installation

pip install readchar

The readchar library is compatible with python 2.6, 2.7, 3.2 and 3.3.

Usage

Usage example:

import readchar

c = readchar.readchar()
key = readchar.readkey()

API

There are just two methods:

readchar()

Reads the next char from stdin, returning it as a string with length 1.

readkey()

Reads the next key-stroke from stdin, returning it as an string.

A key-stroke can have:

• 1 character for normal keys: ‘a’, ‘z’, ‘9’…

• 2 characters for combinations with ALT: ALT+A, …

• 3 characters for cursors: ->, <-, …

• 4 characters for combinations with CTRL and ALT: CTRL+ALT+SUPR, …

There is a list of previously captured chars with their names in readchar.key, in order to be used in comparations and so on. This list is not enough tested and it can have mistakes, so use it carefully. Please, report them if found.

SO Support

Sadly, this library has only being probed on GNU/Linux. Please, if you can try it in another SO and find a bug, put an issue or send the pull-request.

Thank you!

How to contribute

You can download the code, make some changes with their tests, and make a pull-request.

In order to develop or running the tests, you can do:

1. Clone the repository.

git clone https://github.com/magmax/python-readchar.git

2. Create a virtual environment:

virtualenv venv

3. Enter in the virtual environment

. venv/bin/activate

4. Install dependencies

pip -r requirements.txt -r requirements-dev.txt

5. Run tests

make

Please, Execute the tests before any pull-request. This will avoid invalid builds.

License

Copyright (c) 2014 Miguel Ángel García (@magmax9).

Based on previous work on gist getch()-like unbuffered character reading from stdin on both Windows and Unix (Python recipe), started by Danny Yoo.

Licensed under the MIT license.