TalsiOrah has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks ^_^ This is my very first post. I honestly did not think I would need to, but after much searching, I am left with no choice because it's making me think about switching to C. (I know I said it... Lol!) Well first off I am trying to create a very large AI bot that will be embedded into my next computer's ArchLinux. It will have voice recognition, and say some random quotes through a generated voice at random times to simulate actual intelligence. I know I think I'm crazy too. I most definitely fail, but it will be a very good learning experience. So here is my start off code taken from http://mind.sourceforge.net/perl.html 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#

sub security;
sub sensorium;
sub emotion;
sub think;
sub volition;
sub motorium;

while (1) 
{
  security();
  sensorium();
  emotion();
  think();
  volition();
  motorium();
}

sub security 
{
  # security 
}

sub sensorium 
{
  # sensorium
  print "Press ENTER or ESCAPE key: ";
  $_ = <STDIN>;
  exit if (/^\027/);
}

sub emotion 
{
  # emotion 
}

sub think 
{
  # think 
}

sub volition 
{
  # volition 
}

sub motorium 
{
  # motorium 
}

#---

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The problem is that I cannot exit the loop at all unless I press <CONTROL>-C (^C). I thought that it might be trying to terminate just the sensory stub, and then looping back and executing it again. So I moved the "exit if" up into the actual while loop out of frustration, but to no avail. This is a screenie of the output: http://is100.imagesocket.com/images/2012/02/02/2425592-4k99.png I pressed enter twice, then I pressed the ESC key then enter, then finally ^C. That is the right hex for ESC correct? I was really hoping that I could find a way to close/exit the script with having to type into the terminal also. But nothing seems to be working right now. It should be such a simplistic script. I really cannot figure it out. I even tried chomping, and chopping. Help would very much be appreciated. I don't want to end my project before I haven't even started. I am merely a beginner, Thanks for your time ^_^

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Can't exit, except when I press ^C?
by roboticus (Chancellor) on Feb 02, 2012 at 10:51 UTC

    TalsiOrah:

    The ESC character is chr(27), but you're looking for chr(23). The reason? /^\027/ is looking for octal 27 which is decimal 23. You should use /^\033/ which will give you what you're looking for.

    Update: I (briefly) looked around, but didn't find a link to perl documentation on escaping numbers in strings. In an expression, prefix of '0' on a number tells perl to use octal, and a prefix of '0x' tells it to use hexadecimal. In a string, it's similar, you use a prefix of '\0' for octal, and '\x' for hexadecimal.

    Update 2: Perlbotics provided a link perlnumber to what I was looking for, and corrected me on the prefix used for hexadecimal in strings. I clarified the previous update accordingly. The way I worded it previously would have had people using '\0x4C' expecting an 'M', but they'd get chr(0) followed by 'x4C'.

    ...roboticus

    When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

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      Thanks!! That worked!! Am I doing the looping correctly? Like I said, I'm extremely newbie haha. Is there a way to make a global like variable to exit the script? Like read input from outside the terminal? Oh I'm on Linux by the way.
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Re: Can't exit, except when I press ^C?
by Anonymous Monk on Feb 02, 2012 at 05:22 UTC
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      I'm running Linux. And the readline resulted in the same problem. Thanks though! ^_^
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Re: Can't exit, except when I press ^C?
by Anonymous Monk on Feb 02, 2012 at 15:13 UTC
    You've received two good answers here.

    Your code reads a line of text. Then you test to see if the 1st character on that line is a <ctrl-W>.

    Perhaps if you fixed the prompt?

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      Thanks, I was using octal and not hex. Is there a way to make it read input from outside the script so that I could press <esc> anytime and it would close? Sorry I know I'm like super noobie. Thanks though for your time ^_^
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        As the other AM says, look at the Term namespace.

        I tried to find a core solution to you and found  getc, but it's even its documentation points you to the CPAN module Term::ReadKey.

        Looks like now is as good a time as any to learn how to use CPAN (or PPM).

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