Use `stty` to change the operation mode of the terminal to disable line-buffering and non-echoing of typed characters. This lets us read one byte from STDIN. This version is currently tested with OS X

read_one_byte.go

package main

import (
	"bytes"
	"fmt"
	"log"
	"os"
	"os/exec"
)

var originalSttyState bytes.Buffer

func getSttyState(state *bytes.Buffer) (err error) {
	cmd := exec.Command("stty", "-g")
	cmd.Stdin = os.Stdin
	cmd.Stdout = state
	return cmd.Run()
}

func setSttyState(state *bytes.Buffer) (err error) {
	cmd := exec.Command("stty", state.String())
	cmd.Stdin = os.Stdin
	cmd.Stdout = os.Stdout
	return cmd.Run()
}

func main() {
	err := getSttyState(&originalSttyState)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
	defer setSttyState(&originalSttyState)

	setSttyState(bytes.NewBufferString("cbreak"))
	setSttyState(bytes.NewBufferString("-echo"))

	var b []byte = make([]byte, 1)
	for {
		os.Stdin.Read(b)
		fmt.Printf("Read character: %s\n", b)
	}
}

Thank you for this! Following along to this text editor tutorial in C, and didn't realize you could set settings using stty.

Thank you for commenting on a 7 year old gist 😄

😂

oh, but I can do better! I can comment on a 9 year old gist!