Date: 5 Feb 2002 22:03:03 -0400

 The C compilers from Microsoft and Borland offer getch() (or getche() to
 echo the character); Turbo Pascal has ReadKey.

 In other programming languages, execute INT 21 AH=8; AL is returned with
 the character from standard input (possibly redirected). If you don't
 want to allow redirection, or you want to capture Ctrl-C and other
 special keys, use INT 16 AH=10; this will return the scan code in AH and
 ASCII code (if possible) in AL, but AL=E0 with AH nonzero indicates that
 one of the gray "extended" keys was pressed. (If your BIOS doesn't
 support the extended keyboard, use INT 16 AH=0 not 10.)