How can I pause in zsh?

Question

I want to write this bash loop for zsh

while true; do echo "print something"; read -p "pause"; done

This loop echos, then waits for the user to press enter. If I enter it as is, the read statement doesn't pause, causing zsh to infinitely echo "print something" without waiting for the user to press enter.

Answer 1

In zsh:

read -s -k '?Press any key to continue.'

From man zshbuiltins:

• -s Don't echo back characters if reading from the terminal.
• -k Read only one character.
• name?prompt Name is omitted, thus user input is stored in the REPLY variable (and we ignore it). The first argument contains a ?, thus the remainder of this word is used as a prompt on standard error when the shell is interactive.

To include a newline after the prompt:

read -s -k $'?Press any key to continue.\n'

$'' is explained under QUOTING in man zshmisc.

Finally, a pause function that takes an arbitrary prompt message in a script that does what the OP asks:

#!/usr/bin/env zsh

pause() read -s -k "?$*"$'\n'

while true; do
    echo "print something"
    pause "pause"
done