Python - Infinite while loop, break on user input

I have an infinite while loop that I want to break out of when the user presses a key. Usually I use raw_input to get the user's response; however, I need raw_input to not wait for the response. I want something like this:

print 'Press enter to continue.'
while True:
    # Do stuff
    #
    # User pressed enter, break out of loop

This should be a simple, but I can't seem to figure it out. I'm leaning towards a solution using threading, but I would rather not have to do that. How can I accomplish this?


You can use non-blocking read from stdin:

import sys
import os
import fcntl
import time

fl = fcntl.fcntl(sys.stdin.fileno(), fcntl.F_GETFL)
fcntl.fcntl(sys.stdin.fileno(), fcntl.F_SETFL, fl | os.O_NONBLOCK)
while True:
    print("Waiting for user input")
    try:
        stdin = sys.stdin.read()
        if "\n" in stdin or "\r" in stdin:
            break
    except IOError:
        pass
    time.sleep(1)

I think you can do better with msvcrt:

import msvcrt, time
i = 0
while True:
    i = i + 1
    if msvcrt.kbhit():
        if msvcrt.getwche() == '\r':
            break
    time.sleep(0.1)
print(i)

Sadly, still windows-specific.