ubuntu

A better way to use xclip (clipboard from the command line)

Nathan Broadbent

Nathan Broadbent

— 2 min read
A better way to use xclip (clipboard from the command line)
Photo by Luba Ertel / Unsplash

Sometimes you just want to copy something from your terminal and paste it somewhere else.
You might have heard of a Linux program called xclip, which provides a command line
interface to X selections.
However, xclip's default selection isn't the clipboard,
and typing xclip -selection c -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub is just a bit tedious.

So here's a wrapper function that makes it less of a hassle
to integrate the clipboard with the command line.

  • It handles input via pipe or parameters.
  • It automatically uses the contents of a file if you pass it a valid filename.
  • It prints an excerpt of what has been copied, truncated to 80 characters.

Examples

  • Pipe anything to the clipboard
$ tail -n 100 /var/log/apache2/error.log | cb

# => Copied to clipboard: [Sun Oct 02 08:02:08 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.17 (Ubuntu) configured -- resumin...
  • Copy the contents of a file to the clipboard
$ cbf ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

# => Copied to clipboard: ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAnwaNIuOhZzUeR6/xEEudXt3zEh91dawhkkKx8p/+4Bw9...
  • Type straight into the clipboard
$ cb This is some unquoted text.

# => Copied to clipboard: This is some unquoted text.

No options, no man pages.

It also comes with a handy cb_ssh alias that copies your SSH public key to the clipboard,
for when you are setting up your new BitBucket account
with unlimited, free private git repositories!
I'm not affiliated with Atlassian, I just think they're awesome.

So if you think this looks handy, you can add the following to your ~/.bashrc:


# A shortcut function that simplifies usage of xclip.

# - Accepts input from either stdin (pipe), or params.

# ------------------------------------------------

cb() {
local \_scs_col="\e[0;32m"; local \_wrn_col='\e[1;31m'; local \_trn_col='\e[0;33m'

# Check that xclip is installed.

if ! type xclip > /dev/null 2>&1; then
echo -e "$\_wrn_col""You must have the 'xclip' program installed.\e[0m"

# Check user is not root (root doesn't have access to user xorg server)

elif [["$USER" == "root"]]; then
echo -e "$_wrn_col""Must be regular user (not root) to copy a file to the clipboard.\e[0m"
  else
    # If no tty, data should be available on stdin
    if ! [[ "$( tty )" == /dev/_ ]]; then
input="$(< /dev/stdin)"
    # Else, fetch input from params
    else
      input="$_"
fi
if [ -z "$input" ]; then # If no input, print usage message.
echo "Copies a string to the clipboard."
echo "Usage: cb <string>"
echo " echo <string> | cb"
else # Copy input to clipboard
echo -n "$input" | xclip -selection c
      # Truncate text for status
      if [ ${#input} -gt 80 ]; then input="$(echo $input | cut -c1-80)$\_trn_col...\e[0m"; fi # Print status.
echo -e "$\_scs_col""Copied to clipboard:\e[0m $input"
fi
fi
}

# Aliases / functions leveraging the cb() function

# ------------------------------------------------

# Copy contents of a file

function cbf() { cat "$1" | cb; }

# Copy SSH public key

alias cbssh="cbf ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub"

# Copy current working directory

alias cbwd="pwd | cb"

# Copy most recent command in bash history

alias cbhs="cat $HISTFILE | tail -n 1 | cb"

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