There's two different types of "portable" here. (Well, one's portability and the other's extensibility, but it's Monday and I like making words dance for me.)

Term::ReadKey is portable across platforms, like Unix vs. Windows, if you know you will only want I/O from the keyboard.

If you're on Unix and may want input from a socket as well as the keyboard, you can use select and bind STDIN and a socket. There are a few nodes that deal with this. (I'm lazy ... you can use SuperSearch. *grins*)

If you want to be completely portable in both ways, then you can finagle the select on Windows if you're willing to telnet to yourself. (Again, there's a node on this somewhere on the monastery. *winks*)

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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.