can i test for keyboard input?

[mike newman]

I would like to be able to respond dynamically to keyboard input
(without doing getchar and waiting for the user to type something) by
either:

     1)	Having some kind of interrupt routine that will be called
	every time a key is pressed.

     2) Calling some OS routine that returns TRUE/FALSE if there
	is/isn't any keyboard input waiting.  I know my little ol' ST
	at home (bless it's heart :-) has such a call: does unix?

     3) Any other way :-).

This seems like it should be possible: musn't the shell do something
along these lines to handle type ahead? (???)

Please email replies: if there is interest, I will post a summary.

mike newman
mwnewman at msg.waterloo.edu