Problem Not solved although one answer was accepted: We are working to get Jonah's code to work.
Problem: to change the code of (1) to (2)
I know the thread. I want to be able to run the following code inside Screen
Code (1)
cat ~/.vimrc | pbcopy (1)
Code (2)
cat ~/.vimrc > /tmp/pbcopy.pipe (2)
My attempt to solve the problem:
to put the following code to .zshrc
function pbcopy() { "(cat \"$1\")" > /tmp/pbcopy.pipe }
I get
cat masi | pbcopy
pbcopy: command not found: (cat "")
cat: masi: No such file or directory
How can you use pbcopy inside Screen?
Alright, this is a screwy answer, but it is also a screwy question, so at least they match. You can create a named pipe with mkfifo
, and then setup an infinite loop that reads files from the named pipe and pipes them to pbcopy
(or xsel
, xclip
, etc.).
1. In a terminal which is NOT in a screen session (run this only once):
/usr/bin/mkfifo /tmp/pbcopy.pipe
while true; do /bin/cat /tmp/pbcopy.pipe | /usr/bin/pbcopy; done
You may want to turn this into a shell script like (this probably should be more robust)
#!/bin/bash
if [[ -e /tmp/pbcopy.pipe ]]; then
echo "it looks like I am already running"
echo "remove /tmp/pbcopy.pipe if you are certain I am not"
exit 1
fi
while true; do
/bin/cat /tmp/pbcopy.pipe | /usr/bin/pbcopy
done
which you can name pbcopy_server.sh
, make executable (chmod a+x pbcopy_server.sh
) and put somewhere in your path, so you can say nohup pbcopy_server.sh &
when you first start your machine.
2. In any other terminal (including those in screen sessions) you can now cat files (or redirect output of programs into /tmp/pbcopy.pipe and the text will appear in the clipboard.
cat file > /tmp/pbcopy.pipe
df -h > /tmp/pbcopy.pipe
3. To make it look like you are calling the real pbcopy
you can use something to do the cat'ing to /tmp/pbcopy.pipe
for you.
3a. Use a zsh
function:
function pbcopy() { cat > /tmp/pbcopy.pipe }
3b. Or create a Perl script named pbcopy
and put it in a directory earlier in your PATH
than /usr/bin
:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
open my $out, ">", "/tmp/pbcopy.pipe"
or die "could not open pipe to pbcopy: $!\n";
print $out $_ while <>;
There is a much easier solution to just use osascript as found at http://www.samsarin.com/blog/2008/10/18/copying-gnu-screen-buffer-to-leopard-clipboard/
In the comments, Andrew Wason provides this solution to copy the screen buffer:
Code in your .screenrc
# binds C-a b to copy the contents of your last screen copy to the MacOSX pasteboard
bind b eval "writebuf /tmp/screen-pbcopy" "exec /usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"' -e 'set the clipboard to (read posix file \"/tmp/screen-pbcopy\" as text)' -e 'end tell'"
Also using osascript, here's a bash script which emulates the behavior of pbcopy within screen. Improvements to this script are welcome:
Save this code as a bash script somewhere in your path, example: ~/bin/pbcopyScreen.bash
#!/bin/bash
# saves all standard input to a file
cat > /tmp/screen_pbcopy_kludge_buffer
# uses osascript to set the MacOSX pastebaord to the contents of the file
/usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application "System Events"' -e 'set the clipboard to (read posix file "/tmp/screen_pbcopy_kludge_buffer" as text)' -e 'end tell'
rm /tmp/screen_pbcopy_kludge_buffer
You may install an older version of Macport's screen which seems to solve this issue, as stated in comments of this article:
link to the last comment explaining how to do
I've tried myself and screen works very fine now with pbcopy ! :-)
Check that step:
Install Macport using its DMG file. Leopard's DMG
Launch a new Terminal and
$ sudo vi /opt/local/etc/macports/sources.conf
finally those 2 lines only remains in sources.conf, no more:
file:///Users/xxxxx/ports
rsync://rsync.macports.org/release/ports/ [default]
$ cd
$ mkdir -p ports/sysutils/
(do not create a "screen" directory, svn will)
$ cd ports/sysutils/
$ svn co -r 45745 http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/trunk/dports/sysutils/screen
Once check out:
$ cd $HOME/ports
$ portindex
Creating software index in /Users/keugaerg/ports
Adding port sysutils/screen
Total number of ports parsed: 1
Ports successfully parsed: 1
Ports failed: 0
$ sudo port install screen
(may take a while as downloading screen and buidling it)
Then it's done, just have to launch /opt/local/bin/screen .
This appears to be fixed in Snow Leopard's version of GNU Screen even though it keeps the same version number 4.00.03 (FAU) 23-Oct-06.
Alternatively you can update to Screen version 4.01:
git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/screen.git