Read a single key press from the terminal
install.packages("keypress")> has_keypress_support()
[1] TRUE> x <- keypress()
> cat("You pressed key", x, "\n")
You pressed key hThis is unfortunately impossible to do in - RStudio, - R.app (the
builtin OSX GUI), - RGui (the builtin Windows GUI), - Emacs ESS, or - if
stdin() is not a terminal.
In other words, it pretty much only works interactively, in a terminal. The terminal can be pretty much any Linux, OSX, or other Unix terminal or Windows cmd (also called RTerm in R).
Note that not all keys are supported, in particular most of the
modifiers (alt, shift, etc.) are not. Supported special keys are: -
Arrow keys: up, down, right,
left. Available on most keyboards. - Function keys: from
f1 to f12. Available on most keyboards. -
Other special keys: enter, backspace,
escape, tab. - Some key combinations with the
CONTROL key: ctrl-a, ctrl-b,
ctrl-c, ctrl-d, ctrl-e,
ctrl-f, ctrl-h, ctrl-k,
ctrl-l, ctrl-n, ctrl-p,
ctrl-t, ctrl-u, ctrl-w. - Keys
typically not availale on OS X keyboards: home,
end, insert, delete,
pageup, pagedown. - On Linux and OS X Unicode
characters are supported, but not (yet) on Windows. Unicode characters
are returned UTF-8 encoded.
MIT © Gábor Csárdi