There are a couple of ways to achieve this. You can use the KeyPressFcn callback on the figure window. Here is an example.
h_fig = figure;
set(h_fig,'KeyPressFcn',@myfun);
The myfun here could have something like this.
function myfun(src,event)
disp(event.Key);
end
k = waitforbuttonpress;
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value = double(get(gcf,'CurrentCharacter'))
I hope this helps.
