15 Mar 95, Mark Kimes writes to Jon Guthrie:

 >> Among other effects,
 >> I wanted to be able to allow the user to type in escape sequences
 >> (like the ^[[A that most terminal programs transmit when you hit
 >> the up-arrow key) and still recognize single escape characters.

 > 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 [.

That won't work unless you have some sort of timeout.  After all, if you wait
for the character following the escape character in order to determine
whether it's a single escape or part of a sequence, you might have to wait
a long time.

 > 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.


- Jon

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