Detect Keyboard Input Matlab
I have a simple question, although it's harder than it seems; I couldn't find the answer on the interwebs :O I'm writing a script in Matlab. What I want to do is the following: When I press the esc key, I want a helpdialogue to pop up, so my script pauses. (So when I press esc, I want to stop the whole script to run so that the car (which im writing the script for) stops driving) How do I do this? How can I say to Matlab: When I press esc, do this... Thanks for your time guys! EDIT: It's no option to implement something which awaits the keypress. Im writing a script for a driving car. It just has to drive around basically, but when I press esc for example, it should stop driving. So the script just has to run, untill I press the esc key; then the script has to pause.
John Michell answered .
2025-11-20
KeyPressFcn is good because it forces you to write event-driven code. Which is generally a good idea! However, if KeyPressFcn doesn't seem right for you, for example if you must keep running in a loop, and you just want to poll whether a key has been pressed, I found this solution buried in the matlab website:
get(gcf,'CurrentCharacter')
Then you could set this property to a blank, and poll it as required. e.g:
finish=false;
set(gcf,'CurrentCharacter','@'); % set to a dummy character
while ~finish
% do things in loop...
% check for keys
k=get(gcf,'CurrentCharacter');
if k~='@' % has it changed from the dummy character?
set(gcf,'CurrentCharacter','@'); % reset the character
% now process the key as required
if k=='q', finish=true; end
end
end
This worked well for me in 2014b. The downside is that the graphics window needs to be focused to receive the key events.