There are a wealth of clipboards you could be dealing with. I expect you're probably a Linux user who wants to put stuff in the X Windows primary clipboard. Usually, the clipboard you want to talk to has a utility that lets you talk to it.

In the case of X, there's xclip (and others). xclip -selection c will send data to the clipboard that works with Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V in most applications.

If you're on Mac OS X, there's pbcopy. E.g., cat example.txt | pbcopy

If you're in Linux terminal mode (no X) then look into gpm or Screen which has a clipboard. Try the Screen command readreg.

Under Windows 10+ or Cygwin, use /dev/clipboard or clip.

Make sure you are using alias xclip="xclip -selection c"or else you won't be able to paste using Ctrl+v.

Example:After running echo -n test | xclip, Ctrl+v will paste test

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$ getclipfoo