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

Make sure you are using alias xclip="xclip -selection c" otherwise you can't just use to Ctrl+v to paste it back in a different place.

echo test | xclip    

Ctrl+v === test

Answer 2

For Mac only:

echo "Hello World" | pbcopy
pbpaste

These are located /usr/bin/pbcopy and /usr/bin/pbpaste.

Answer 3

On the Windows subsystem for Linux you can copy to the clipboard with clip.exe.

cat file | clip.exe

Keep in mind to use the | pipe command. And not a > command, since that will not work.

Answer 4

2018 answer

Use clipboard-cli. It works with macOS, Windows, Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and Android without any real issues.

Install it with:

npm install -g clipboard-cli

Then you can do

echo foo | clipboard

If you want, you can alias to cb by putting the following in your .bashrc, .bash_profile, or .zshrc:

alias cb=clipboard

Answer 5

There are a couple ways. Some of the ways that have been mentioned include (I think) tmux, screen, vim, emacs, and the shell. I don't know emacs or screen, so I'll go over the other three.

Tmux

While not an X selection, tmux has a copy mode accessible via prefix-[ (prefix is Ctrl+B by default). The buffer used for this mode is separate and exclusive to tmux, which opens up quite a few possibilities and makes it more versatile than the X selections in the right situations.

To exit this mode, hit q; to navigate, use your vim or emacs binding (default = vim), so hjkl for movement, v/V/C-v for character/line/block selection, etc. When you have your selection, hit Enter to copy and exit the mode.

To paste from this buffer, use prefix-].

Shell

Any installation of X11 seems to come with two programs by default: xclip and xsel (kinda like how it also comes with both startx and xinit). Most of the other answers mention xclip, and I really like xsel for its brevity, so I'm going to cover xsel.

From xsel(1x):

Input options

-a, --append

append standard input to the selection. Implies -i.

-f, --follow

append to selection as standard input grows. Implies -i.

-i, --input

read standard input into the selection.

Output options

-o, --output

write the selection to standard output.

Action options

-c, --clear

clear the selection. Overrides all input options.

-d, --delete

Request that the current selection be deleted. This not only clears the selection, but also requests to the program in which the selection resides that the selected contents be deleted. Overrides all input options.

Selection options

-p, --primary

operate on the PRIMARY selection (default).

-s, --secondary

operate on the SECONDARY selection.

-b, --clipboard

operate on the CLIPBOARD selection.

And that's about all you need to know. p (or nothing) for PRIMARY, s for SECONDARY, b for CLIPBOARD, o for output.

Example: say I want to copy the output of foo from a TTY and paste it to a webpage for a bug report. To do this, it would be ideal to copy to/from the TTY/X session. So the question becomes how do I access the clipboard from the TTY?

For this example, we'll assume the X session is on display :1.

$ foo -v
Error: not a real TTY
details:
blah blah @ 0x0000000040abeaf4
blah blah @ 0x0000000040abeaf8
blah blah @ 0x0000000040abeafc
blah blah @ 0x0000000040abeb00
...
$ foo -v | DISPLAY=:1 xsel -b # copies it into clipboard of display :1

Then I can Ctrl-V it into the form as per usual.

Now say that someone on the support site gives me a command to run to fix the problem. It's complicated and long.

$ DISPLAY=:1 xsel -bo
sudo foo --update --clear-cache --source-list="http://foo-software.com/repository/foo/debian/ubuntu/xenial/164914519191464/sources.txt"
$ $(DISPLAY=:1 xsel -bo)
Password for braden:
UPDATING %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 100.00%
Clearing cache...
Fetching sources...
Reticulating splines...
Watering trees...
Climbing mountains...
Looking advanced...
Done.
$ foo
Thank you for your order. A pizza should arrive at your house in the next 20 minutes. Your total is $6.99

Pizza ordering seems like a productive use of the command line.

...moving on.

Vim

If compiled with +clipboard (This is important! Check your vim --version), Vim should have access to the X PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD selections. The two selections are accessible from the * and + registers, respectively, and may be written to and read from at your leisure the same as any other register. For example:

:%y+    ; copy/yank (y) everything (%) into the CLIPBOARD selection (+)
"+p     ; select (") the CLIPBOARD selection (+) and paste/put it
ggVG"+y ; Alternative version of the first example

If your copy of vim doesn't directly support access to X selections, though, it's not the end of the world. You can just use the xsel technique as described in the last section.

:r ! xsel -bo ; read  (r) from the stdout of (!) `xsel -bo`
:w ! xsel -b  ; write (w) to the stdin of    (!) `xsel -b`

Bind a couple key combos and you should be good.

Answer 6

Here is a ready to use bash script for reading the clipboard which works on multiple platforms. Please edit the script here if you add functionality (e.g. more platforms).

#!/bin/bash
# WF 2013-10-04
# multi platform clipboard read access
# supports
#   Mac OS X
#   git shell / Cygwin (Windows)
#   Linux (e.g. Ubuntu)

#
# display an error
#
error() {
  echo "error: $1" 1>&2
  exit 1
}

#
# getClipboard
#
function getClipboard() {
 os=`uname`
      case $os in 
        # git bash  (Windows)
        MINGW32_NT-6.1)
          cat /dev/clipboard;;
        # Mac OS X
        Darwin*)
          pbpaste;;  
        # Linux 
        Linux*)
          # works only for X clipboard - a check that X is running might be due
          xclip -o;;
        *)
          error "unsupported os $os";;
      esac
}

tmp=/tmp/clipboard$$
getClipboard >$tmp
cat $tmp
# comment out for debugging
rm $tmp