What's wrong with getc?

From perldoc:

getc FILEHANDLE
getc

Returns the next character from the input file attached to FILEHANDLE, or the undefined value at end of file, or if there was an error. If FILEHANDLE is omitted, reads from STDIN. This is not particularly efficient. However, it cannot be used by itself to fetch single characters without waiting for the user to hit enter. For that, try something more like:

That sounds like how I expect getc to work. Or, am I missing something?