signal/events

[Jacob Gladish <gladish wolf sneakerlabs com>]

Im having a problem with a signal handler attatched to an arrow key and
the callback takes a fairly long time to finish and return. what is
happening is when the user holds the key down, the events get queued up
and keep processing after the key is released. Im familiary with gui
programming in java where there is a property for a timer object called
coalesce which throws out events that come into the queue if one of the
same is currently being processed which eliminates this. my question is,
can I do something similar so that once the user "unholds" the arrow key, 
the queue is empty, because of this property?
 
thanks
jake