Why doesn't Python include non-blocking keyboard input function?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2016-10-27, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:

> When I used unix in the 1980s, the full screen ran csh until one started 
> another full screen application.  MSDOS was the same. Every contemporary 
> photo of modern Linux or Mac I have seen has a desktop with windows just 
> like Windows.  Do people on Linux still commonly use full-screen,

It depends on your definition of "commonly".  I do it fairly
regularly, but only for short periods of time while doing system
maintenance stuff.

> no  window text editors like the one I had?

Don't know what you mean by "window text editors"

> On Windows, there are full screen games, but I have never seen a
> full-screen, no-window text application.

Just con't conflate "full-screen" with "command-line" or "terminal"
applications.  I do use terminal applications all day, every day, but
I mostly run them in terminal emulator windows on top of X11 (that way
I can have lots of terminals of various sizes and shapes).

> Since modern screen are pixel graphics screens, rather than character 
> screens, there must be a widget, whether standard with the OS or custom 
> to the console, that emulates the old fixed-pitch character screens.

Yes.  On Unix they're called terminal emulators, and I use lots of
them them constantly.  This post is being edited in one.

> At least on Windows, C Programs that run with the console still get
> characters entered by users and send characters to be displayed.

On Unix, a terminal emulator on an X11/Wayland desktop, a linux video
console, a real serial terminal connected to an RS-232C serial port,
or a "screen" session <https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/> all
behave pretty much the same.  The API supported by the pty driver, the
video console tty driver, and the real serial-port tty driver, all
provide a common set of API calls.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! I wish I was on a
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