fgetc should have at least the option of returning a single charachter immediatly upon its entry, or another function should be defined (such as getchar()) that achieves similar functionality to fgetc(stdin) which return a single charachter immediatly. 

The following script allows the user to type more than a single charachter and only returns when the user hits enter. fgetc should simply block until a single charachter is entered and then return. 

This is missing functionality that can not be worked around easily as far as I can tell. 

Script:

$fp = fopen("php://stdin", "r");
$char = fgetc($fp);
echo $char;