How to get the last character pressed on the keyboard?

I dont want to wait to anything, just need to read out the last pressed key. Is it possible?

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

Neither matlab nor the OS keep a record of the key presses. If you don't capture it when it occurs, then it never happened.

If you're using a matlab GUI, you could detect all keypresses (while your GUI has focus) using the WindowKeyPressFcn callback and store the key pressed into a variable. Whatever last value was written in this variable would be the last key pressed.

If you want it to work without a GUI or want to track key pressed even when your GUI is not in focus, then you'll have to hook directly into your OS API most likely via a mex file. An exercice left to the reader... Again you'll have to actively capture the key presses and keep the last one on hand for when you need it.

[Walter Roberson]

If a figure is in focus then you can access its CurrentCharacter property.

If you do not have any figures at all then see Guillaume's answer.