Checking for Waiting Input (Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition)

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15.9. Checking for Waiting Input

15.9.1. Problem

You want to know whether keyboard input is waiting without actually reading it.

15.9.2. Solution

Use the CPAN module Term::ReadKey, and try to read a key in non-blocking mode by passing it an argument of -1:

use Term::ReadKey;

ReadMode ('cbreak');

if (defined ($char = ReadKey(-1)) ) {
    # input was waiting and it was $char
} else {
    # no input was waiting
}

ReadMode ('normal');                  # restore normal tty settings

15.9.3. Discussion

The -1 parameter to ReadKey indicates a non-blocking read of a character. If no character is available, ReadKey returns undef.

15.9.4. See Also

The documentation for the Term::ReadKey module from CPAN; Recipe 15.6


15.8. Using POSIX termios		15.10. Reading Passwords