JG>Among other effects,
 JG>I wanted to be able to allow the user to type in escape sequences
 JG>(like the ^[[A that most terminal programs transmit when you hit
 JG>the up-arrow key) and still recognize single escape characters.
 JG>The ONLY way of doing this reasonably is to use an inter-character
 JG>timeout.  It is NOT possible to do a proper inter-character timeout
 JG>without a second thread

It's not necessary to do a timeout for this sort of thing -- who cares
whether the user's terminal sent it or the user force-typed it (with
some terminals you can't tell the difference)?  To recognize single
escape characters, simply look for ^[ NOT followed immediately by [.
For my own code, I use the following method -- get a character, if it's
^[, peek (no waiting) the next character; if it's [, process balance as
an escape sequence, else process ^[ and continue.  Hasn't ever failed.

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