Does key? tell whether keyboard buffer is non-empty?

[Don Stone <don.stone@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, All,

I am a retired computer science professor who many years ago taught a 
Logo course for liberal arts students.  My Logo now is somewhat rusty, 
but I am trying to work with my nephew (an 8th-grade student) on a 
MicroWorlds game.  (He took a special MicroWorlds course at school.)

{The following is an updated version of a one-time-only question I 
submitted yesterday as a non-subscriber.}

In our game each player's piece (a turtle) moves every quarter-second or 
so.  (The time interval between moves is specified by the variable 
:interval.)  What we want to do is collect all the keystrokes typed 
during that interval and set heading variables from them.  The key? demo 
in the MicroWorlds Vocabulary documentation page looks like it has the 
elements we need, but unfortunately we can't see all the code behind 
it.  I am interpreting the MW documentation to be saying that key? is 
true when the keyboard buffer is non-empty; is this correct?  Our 
attempt (below) based on this interpretation doesn't work. What are we 
doing wrong?  Thanks for any assistance!  (We have MicroWorlds Pro 1.1.)

 -- Don Stone

to getcommands
wait :interval
forever [
 ifelse key? [
   make "move readchar
   if :move = "a [make "dir1 270]
   if :move = "w [make "dir1 0]
   {etc.}
   ]
   [stop]
 ]
end