Input from the keyboard

There are three standard filehandles: STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR.
STDIN is usually from a user at the keyboard, and line-buffered.
This is so the program's input and output can be redirected and it never has to know.
If you write code that assumes a keyboard you remove this flexibility. But if you must, then use the Term::ReadKey module from CPAN.

Or use stty if you have it:

system("stty cbreak"); $c = getc(); system("stty sane");

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