How to detect the shortcut combination CTRL + Key in python curses

Question

I have been reading the documentation on curses in Python but I cannot figure it out how to detect the combinations like CTRL-S, or CTRL-A, or ALT-X, or CMD+A (in macOS), etc. Anyone knows how to do it?

Someone mentioned user ord(), but I cannot find the number that CTRL returns.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

windows.getkey returns ^A for CTRL-A, wich is a special character with ord 1. Simlarly, CTRL-E will return ^E which has ord(5).

Try this for seeing the strings that getkey returns when you press a key. Note that some keys (Cursor keys for instance) will return a mutlti-byte string.

from curses import wrapper

def main(stdscr):
    while True:
        key = stdscr.getkey()
        stdscr.clear()
        stdscr.addstr(1,0, "Key pressed is '{}' (ord {})".format(key, ord(key[0])))
        stdscr.refresh()
        if ord(key) == 24: # CTRL-X
            break

wrapper(main)