How can I use a keypressfct without a figure?

Hello, I just want to use a keypressfct sort of thing, except for there is no figure in my code. I am just taking data and it is continuously displaying on the screen and I want to be able to press spacebar and have the code stop. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Answer 1

[Jan]

A Keypress-function, which is not bound to a specific figure, is called a keylogger. Such programs are used to steal passwords usually and therefore I will not implement or share the corresponding code.

Instead of catching a pressed space bar, using a tiny GUI with a "Stop"-Button would be much more user-friendly due to the intuitive interaction. Then let the button change a globally readable property, e.g.:

H = uicontrol('Sytle', 'PushButton', 'String', 'Stop', ...
              'Callback', 'delete(gcbf)');

for k = 1:1e6
  disp(k);

    drawnow;
    if ~ishandle(H)
       disp('Stopped by user');
       break;
    end
  end

[JP]

Well that code sort of worked, but it keeps crashing my program for some reason, I cant figure it out. Im probably going to look up the how to make a keylogger though because it would be useful not to have to build a gui in the future