In my example I’m printing numbers, so I need a busy loop. In the general case yes poll is much nicer, thanks. If we’re only using poll for this case, I don’t think you even need to check the return value, so you have:

import sys, select, tty, termios
old_settings = termios.tcgetattr(sys.stdin)
try:
    tty.setcbreak(sys.stdin.fileno())
    poll = select.poll()
    poll.register(sys.stdin, select.POLLIN)
    while 1:
        poll.poll()
        c = sys.stdin.read(1)
        print(c)
finally:
    termios.tcsetattr(sys.stdin, termios.TCSADRAIN, old_settings)

poll = select.poll()
poll.register(sys.stdin, select.POLLIN)
events = poll.poll()
for fid, event in events:
    if fid == sys.stdin.fileno():
        in = raw_input()
        print 'user,says something:', in
    else:
       make something else...

Though I particularly failed to get Bill Hamilton’s said ‘elegant’ solution to pull off the trick, this is how I combined both your approaches to do the thing with threading thrown in:

import sys
import select
import tty
import termios
from threading import Thread

program_run = True
input_thread_timeout = 0.005 #seconds
quit_key = '\x1b' # x1b is ESC

#check stdin for input...
def isData():
        return select.select([sys.stdin], [], [], 0) == ([sys.stdin], [], [])

#check n terminate program on terminal condition,
#from a separate thread
class waitOnInput(Thread):
    def run(self):
        old_settings = termios.tcgetattr(sys.stdin)
        try:
            tty.setcbreak(sys.stdin.fileno())
            global program_run
            thread_run = True
            while thread_run:
                if isData():
                    c = sys.stdin.read(1)
                    if c == quit_key:
                        break
                        thread_run = False
                        program_run = False
        finally:
            termios.tcsetattr(sys.stdin, termios.TCSADRAIN, old_settings)
            thread_run = False


t = waitOnInput()

#start work here...
i = 1

while program_run :
    if not t.is_alive():
        t.start()

    #test for terminal condition or timeout...
    t.join(input_thread_timeout)

    if t.is_alive():
        #continue work here...
        print i
        i += 1
    else:
        break

import sys
try:
    if sys.platform == 'win32':
        import msvcrt
        def getKey():  // blocking read of one character for windows
            return msvcrt.getch()
    else:
        import termios, tty
        old_settings = termios.tcgetattr(sys.stdin)
        tty.setcbreak(sys.stdin.fileno())

        def getKey(): // blocking read of one character for mac
            return sys.stdin.read(1)

    for i in range(10):
        k = getKey()
        print k
finally:
    if sys.platform != 'win32':
        import termios
        termios.tcsetattr(sys.stdin, termios.TCSADRAIN, old_settings)

Thanks for taking the time to provide the non blocking example in Java. Your code works well.

However, when I add to your code, with other character input, like this:

 if ( System.in.available() != 0 ) {
    int c = System.in.read();
    if ( c == 0x1B ) {
        break;
    }
    if (c ==0x1F ){
        System.out.println("down arrow pressed")'
    }

}

it unexpectedly breaks every time, even when i hit the down arrow key!!

Why does that happen? & What should I do to get it to work?

Regards Aubrey.

I find your solution was not very elegant in python. Unfortunately Im using mac and although I LOVE pygame, I cant seem to get it to work. Also Im using console and don’t want to be unix specific. So what I did is this:

from threading import Thread
program_run = True

class waitOnInput(Thread):
    def run(self):
    global program_run
    thread_run = True
    while thread_run :
            data = raw_input('input command (q for quit)->')
        print 'got input : ', data
        if data == 'q' :
            thread_run = False
        program_run = False

while program_run :
    t = waitOnInput()
    t.start()
    #do stuff

t.join()