Pipe to/from the clipboard in Bash script

Question

Is it possible to pipe to/from the clipboard in Bash?

Whether it is piping to/from a device handle or using an auxiliary application, I can't find anything.

For example, if /dev/clip was a device linking to the clipboard we could do:

cat /dev/clip        # Dump the contents of the clipboard
cat foo > /dev/clip  # Dump the contents of "foo" into the clipboard

Answer 1

Although >1 year later, I share a slightly different solution. Hope this is useful for somebody.

Yesterday I found myself with the question: "How to share the clipboard between different user sessions?". When switching between sessions with ctrlaltF7 - ctrlaltF8, in fact, you can't paste what you copied.

I came up with the following quick & dirty solution, based on a named pipe. It is surely quite bare and raw, but I found it functional:

user1@host:~$ mkfifo /tmp/sharedClip

then in the sending terminal

user1@host:~$ cat > /tmp/sharedClip

last, in the receiving terminal:

user2@host:~$ cat /tmp/sharedClip

Now, you type or paste anything in the first terminal, and (after hitting return), it will appear immediately in the receiving terminal, from where you can Copy/Paste again anywhere you like.

Of course this doesn't just strictly take the content from user1's clipboard to make it available in user2's clipboard, but rather it requires an additional pair of Paste & Copy clicks.

Answer 2

A few Windows programs I wrote years ago. They allow you dump, push, append and print the clipboard. It works like this:

dumpclip | perl -pe "s/monkey/chimp/g;" | pushclip

It includes source code: cmd_clip.zip

Answer 3

On macOS use the built in pbcopy and pbpaste commands.

For example, if you run

cat ~/.bashrc | pbcopy

the contents of the ~/.bashrc file will be available for pasting with the Cmd+v shortcut.

Answer 4

xsel on Debian/Ubuntu/Mint

# append to clipboard:
cat 'the file with content' | xsel -ib

# or type in the happy face :) and ...
echo 'the happy face :) and content' | xsel -ib

# show clipboard
xsel -b

# Get more info:
man xsel

Install

sudo apt-get install xsel

Answer 5

There are different clipboards in Linux; the X server has one, the window manager might have another one, etc. There is no standard device.

Oh, yes, on CLI, the screen program has its own clipboard as well, as do some other applications like Emacs and vi.

In X, you can use xclip.

You can check this thread for other possible answers: http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.unix.shell/2004-07/0919.html

Answer 6

Install

# You can install xclip using `apt-get`
apt-get install xclip

# or `pacman`
pacman -S xclip

# or `dnf`
dnf install xclip

If you do not have access to apt-get nor pacman, nor dnf, the sources are available on sourceforge.

Set-up

Bash

In ~/.bash_aliases, add:

alias setclip="xclip -selection c"
alias getclip="xclip -selection c -o"

Do not forget to load your new configuration using . ~/.bash_aliases or by restarting your profile.

Fish

In ~/.config/fish/config.fish, add:

abbr setclip "xclip -selection c"
abbr getclip "xclip -selection c -o"

Do not forget to restart your fish instance by restarting your terminal for changes to apply.

Usage

You can now use setclip and getclip, e.g:

$ echo foo | setclip
$ getclip
foo