Keyboard input Buffer

[karlp ourldsfamily com]

In other languages, I can read the keyboard buffer and test for input. Is
there any command/sh function that will allow for such behavior from
within a shell script?

I'm envisioning something like:

for i in `ls /dev/tty*`
do
something or other
KEYIN=`check keyboard buffer prg`
 if [ "$KEYIN" ! '' ] ; then
   :
 else
   do something else
 fi

TIA,

Karl