You can use Term::ReadKey to do this. For example:

use Term::ReadKey;

ReadMode(3);
my $key = ReadKey(0);
ReadMode(0);

Thanks. I downloaded the RPM, but am going through dependency hell. :( Kinda got busy here at work, but will play around w/ it in a bit. Thanks again

To automatically grab dependencies, use CPAN.pm.

perl -MCPAN -e 'install Term::ReadKey;'
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Should do the trick.

   if ($BSD_STYLE) {
        system "stty cbreak </dev/tty >/dev/tty 2>&1";
    }
    else {
        system "stty", '-icanon', 'eol', "\001";
    }
 

    $key = getc(STDIN);
 

    if ($BSD_STYLE) {
        system "stty -cbreak </dev/tty >/dev/tty 2>&1";
    }
    else {
        system "stty", 'icanon', 'eol', '^@'; # ASCII null
    }
    
    print "key was $key"; exit;
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Look at the FAQ Anywhay below is a solution from FAQ that works on a linux platform (and cygwin) only . Here is a module that provides all necessary methods. HotKey.pm

package HotKey;

    @ISA = qw(Exporter);
    @EXPORT = qw(cbreak cooked readkey);

    use strict;
    use POSIX qw(:termios_h);
    my ($term, $oterm, $echo, $noecho, $fd_stdin);

    $fd_stdin = fileno(STDIN);
    $term     = POSIX::Termios->new();
    $term->getattr($fd_stdin);
    $oterm     = $term->getlflag();

    $echo     = ECHO | ECHOK | ICANON;
    $noecho   = $oterm & ~$echo;

    sub cbreak {
        $term->setlflag($noecho);  # ok, so i don't want echo either
        $term->setcc(VTIME, 1);
        $term->setattr($fd_stdin, TCSANOW);
    }

    sub cooked {
        $term->setlflag($oterm);
        $term->setcc(VTIME, 0);
        $term->setattr($fd_stdin, TCSANOW);
    }

    sub readkey {
        my $key = '';
        cbreak();
        sysread(STDIN, $key, 1);
        cooked();
        return $key;
    }

    END { cooked() }

  1;
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#! /usr/bin/perl

use HotKey;

loop {
    $key = readkey();  
    print "you printed - $key \n";
} until $key eq 'a';
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