How can I copy the output of a command directly into my clipboard

Question

How can I pipe the output of a command into my clipboard and paste it back when using a terminal  For instance   cat file   clipboard

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Linux  amp  Windows  WSL  When using the Windows Subsystem for Linux  e g  Ubuntu Debian on WSL  the xclip solution won t work  Instead you need to use clip exe and powershell exe to copy into and paste from the Windows clipboard   bashrc This solution works on  quot real quot  Linux-based systems  i e  Ubuntu  Debian  as well as on WSL systems  Just put the following code into your  bashrc  if grep -q -i microsoft  proc version  then       on WSL     alias copy  quot clip exe quot      alias paste  quot powershell exe Get-Clipboard quot  else       on  quot normal quot  linux     alias copy  quot xclip -sel clip quot      alias paste  quot xclip -sel clip -o quot  fi  How it works The file  proc version contains information about the currently running OS  When the system is running in WSL mode  then this file additionally contains the string Microsoft which is checked by grep  Usage To copy  cat file   copy  And to paste  paste  gt  new file

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For those using bash installed on their windows system  known as Windows Subsystem for Linux  WSL    attempting xclip will give an error   Error  Can t open display   null    Instead  recall that linux subsystem has access to windows executables  It s possible to use clip exe like  echo hello   clip exe   which allows you to use the paste command  ctrl-v

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I made a small tool providing similar functionality  without using xclip or xsel  stdout is copied to a clipboard and can be pasted again in the terminal  See    https   sourceforge net projects commandlinecopypaste   Note  that this tool does not need an X-session  The clipboard can just be used within the terminal and has not to be pasted by Ctrl V or middle-mouse-click into other X-windows

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In Linux with xclip installed      xclip -selection clipboard  lt  file

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I wrote this little script that takes the guess work out of the copy paste commands   The Linux version of the script relies on xclip being already installed in your system  The script is called clipboard      bin bash   Linux version   Use this script to pipe in out of the clipboard     Usage  someapp   clipboard       Pipe someapp s output into clipboard          clipboard   someapp       Pipe clipboard s content into someapp    if command -v xclip 1 gt  dev null  then     if    -p  dev stdin      then           stdin is a pipe           stdin - gt  clipboard         xclip -i -selection clipboard     else           stdin is not a pipe           clipboard - gt  stdout         xclip -o -selection clipboard     fi else     echo  Remember to install xclip  fi   The OS X version of the script relies on pbcopy and pbpaste which are preinstalled on all Macs      bin bash   OS X version   Use this script to pipe in out of the clipboard     Usage  someapp   clipboard       Pipe someapp s output into clipboard          clipboard   someapp       Pipe clipboard s content into someapp    if    -p  dev stdin      then       stdin is a pipe       stdin - gt  clipboard     pbcopy else       stdin is not a pipe       clipboard - gt  stdout     pbpaste fi   Using the script is very simple since you simply pipe in or out of clipboard as shown in these two examples     cat file   clipboard    clipboard   less

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I always wanted to do this and found a nice and easy way of doing it  I wrote down the complete procedure just in case anyone else needs it   First install a 16 nbsp kB program called xclip   sudo apt-get install xclip   You can then pipe the output into xclip to be copied into the clipboard   cat file   xclip   To paste the text you just copied  you shall use   xclip -o   To simplify life  you can set up an alias in your  bashrc file as I did   alias  c xclip  alias  v xclip -o    To see how useful this is  imagine I want to open my current path in a new terminal window  there may be other ways of doing it like Ctrl T on some systems  but this is just for illustration purposes    Terminal 1  pwd   c  Terminal 2  cd  v    Notice the      around v  This executes v as a command first and then substitutes it in-place for cd to use   Only copy the content to the X clipboard  cat file   xclip   If you want to paste somewhere else other than a X application  try this one    cat file   xclip -selection clipboard

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Just to cover an edge case   and because the question title asks  at least now  how to copy the output of a command directly to clipboard  Often times I find it useful to copy the output of the command after it was already executed and I don   t want to or can   t execute the command again  For this scenario  we can either use gdm or a similar mouse utility and select using the mouse  apt-get install gdm and then either the right click or the Cntrl Shift c and Cntrl Shift v combinations for copy and paste in the terminal Or  which is the preferred method for me  as the mouse cannot select properly inside one pane when you have multiple panes side by side and you need to select more than one line   using tmux we can copy into the tmux buffer using the standard       space     move to select       enter or you can select a block of code  Also this is particularly useful when you are inside one of the lanes of the cli multiplexer like tmux AND you need to select a bunch of text  but not the line numbers  my vim setup renders line numbers  After this you can use the command  tmux save-buffer -   xclip -i  You can of course alias it to something you like or bind directly in the tmux configuration file This is just to give you a conceptual answer to cover this edge case when it   s not possible to execute the command again  If you need more specific code examples  let me know Cheers

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Add this to to your    bashrc     Now  cclip  copies and  clipp  pastes  alias cclip  xclip -selection clipboard  alias clipp  xclip -selection clipboard -o       Now clipp pastes and cclip copies  mdash  but you can also do fancier stuff   clipp   sed  s            cclip        uarr  indents your clipboard  good for sites without stack overflow s     button   You can add it by running this   printf   nalias clipp   xclip -selection c -o   n   gt  gt     bashrc printf   nalias cclip   xclip -selection c -i   n   gt  gt     bashrc

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I ve created a tool for Linux OSX Cygwin that is similar to some of these others but slightly unique  I call it cb and it can be found in this github gist   In that gist I demonstrate how to do copy and paste via commandline using Linux  macOS  and Cygwin   Linux   copy        cat   xclip -selection clipboard     paste        xclip -selection clipboard -o     macOS   copy        cat   pbcopy     paste        pbpaste     Cygwin   copy        cat  gt   dev clipboard     paste        cat  dev clipboard     Note  I originally just intended to mention this in my comment to Bob Enohp s answer  But then I realized that I should add a README to my gist  Since the gist editor doesn t offer a Markdown preview I used the answer box here and after copy pasting it to my gist thought   I might as well submit the answer    cb  A leak-proof tee to the clipboard  This script is modeled after tee  see man tee    It s like your normal copy and paste commands  but unified and able to sense when you want it to be chainable  Examples  Copy    date   cb   clipboard contains  Tue Jan 24 23 00 00 EST 2017   Paste    clipboard retained from the previous block   cb Tue Jan 24 23 00 00 EST 2017   cb   cat Tue Jan 24 23 00 00 EST 2017   cb  gt  foo   cat foo Tue Jan 24 23 00 00 EST 2017   Chaining    date   cb   tee updates log Tue Jan 24 23 11 11 EST 2017   cat updates log Tue Jan 24 23 11 11 EST 2017   clipboard contains  Tue Jan 24 23 11 11 EST 2017   Copy via file redirect   chronologically it made sense to demo this at the end     clipboard retained from the previous block   cb  lt  foo   cb Tue Jan 24 23 00 00 EST 2017   note the minutes and seconds changed from 11 back to 00

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on Wayland xcopy doesn t seem to work  use wl-clipboard instead  e g  on fedora  sudo dnf install wl-clipboard  tree   wl-copy  wl-paste  gt  file

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On OS X  use pbcopy  pbpaste goes in the opposite direction   pbcopy  lt   ssh id rsa pub

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I am using Parcellite and xsel to copy last commit message from git to my clipboard manager  for some reason xclip does not work      git log -1 --pretty  B   xsel -i -b

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I come from a stripped down KDE background and do not have access to xclip  xsel or the other fancy stuff  I have a TCSH Konsole to make matters worse   Requisites  qdbus klipper xargs bash  Create a bash executable foo sh      bin bash qdbus org kde klipper  klipper setClipboardContents   1   gt   dev null   Note  This needs to be bash as TCSH does not support multi-line arguments   Followed by a TCSH alias in the cshrc   alias clipboard xargs -0  path to foo   Explanation   xargs -0 pipes stdin into a single argument  This argument is passed to the bash executable which sends a  copy to clipboard  request to klipper using qdbus  The pipe to  dev null is to not print the newline character returned by qdbus to the console   Example Usage   ls   clipboard   This copies the contents of the current folder into the clipboard    Note  Only works as a pipe  Use the bash executable directly if you need to copy an argument

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For mac this is an example way to copy  into clipboard  paste  from clipboard  using command line  Copy the result of pwd command to clipboard as    pwd   pbcopy   Use the content in the clipboard as    cd   pbpaste

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Without using external tools  if you are connecting to the server view SSH  this is a relatively easy command   From a Windows 7  command prompt   ssh user server cat  etc passwd   clip   This will put the content of the remote file to your local clipboard    The command requires running Pageant for the key  or it will ask you for a password

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I usually run this command when I have to copy my ssh-key   cat    ssh id rsa pub   pbcopy   ctrl v anywhere else

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Based on previous posts  I ended up with the following light-weigh alias solution that can be added to  bashrc   if   -n    type -P xclip     then   alias xclip  xclip -selection clipboard    alias clipboard  if   -p  dev stdin    then xclip -in  fi  xclip -out  fi   Examples     Copy   date   clipboard Sat Dec 29 14 12 57 PST 2018    Paste   date Sat Dec 29 14 12 57 PST 2018    Chain   date   clipboard   wc    1       6      29

[linux] How can I copy the output of a command directly into my clipboard?

Linux & Windows (WSL)

.bashrc

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