Without doing threads in Ruby (like you would in Python, for ex), maybe you can do something simple like check for a kbhit (received character from std in) in your loop. This is a common technique when reading rs-232 serial lines on a microcontroller. You want to get data if its in a buffer, but if it is not then you absolutely can’t hang in a get operation.

something like:

if(kbhit())
car=getc()

I’m 2 hours into this language, so I don’t know if this method exists, but it seems like it probably does.

i = 0
go = true
while go do
 print "#{i+=1}, "
 Signal.trap("INT") do
  go = false
 end
end
puts "Terminated by user."

Thank you again,

Thanx!

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -wKU

require "io/wait"

state = `stty -g`
begin
  system "stty raw -echo cbreak isig"

  1.upto(1.0/0.0) do |n|
    puts n
    exit if $stdin.ready? and $stdin.getc == 27
  end

ensure
  system "stty #{state}"
end

__END__

The reason you need the platform specific code here is that you are doing complex interactions (reading and writing at the same time) with a terminal and all terminals are different.