R help - Nov 2010 - Getting user input without hitting enter

Hi,

I am writing a function which requires user to enter a single character.
Something like:

hello<-function(){
	input<-scan(n=1,what="a")
	if(input=="h")cat("Hello") # What goes after the
'if' is completely arbitrary, for simplicity sake I simply put a cat
command here.
}

I want R to automatically finish scanning after the user has entered the 1st
character, without hitting 'enter'.
How do I do this?



Thanks
------------
KC

This is a user interface issue.  The standard command line user interfaces all
wait for the user to hit enter before sending the information to the parser, so
this cannot be done using the standard command line interface.

You could rewrite the source code, but that is probably overkill.  The better
option is to use a different interface, there are several options, some of which
do not require much work to set up (there still is some).  The windows GUI can
have the graphics device catch individual keystrokes and the Tk interfaces
(tcltk package) can do this also (plus probably others).  The playSudoku
function in the sudoku package has examples of both of the above, look at the
code (the important parts are near the end of the function) and you should be
able to see ways to adapt it to your needs.

-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Kohleth Chia
> Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 5:53 AM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Getting user input without hitting enter
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am writing a function which requires user to enter a single
> character. Something like:
> 
> hello<-function(){
> 	input<-scan(n=1,what="a")
> 	if(input=="h")cat("Hello") # What goes after the
'if' is
> completely arbitrary, for simplicity sake I simply put a cat command
> here.
> }
> 
> I want R to automatically finish scanning after the user has entered
> the 1st character, without hitting 'enter'.
> How do I do this?
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks
> ------------
> KC
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