Copy Shell Output via the Command Line
Oftentimes I'll want to copy the output of a shell command execution but can't get the whole output because it's larger than the terminal's buffer length, so I'll need to write to file for easy viewing, or I'll simply be annoyed that I have to click-hold-drag to copy the output. Shouldn't there be an easier way? There is: pbcopy and clip. Using pbcopy within the shell, the output of an execution can automatically be added to the copy queue (or clipboard):
# Copy the source of davidwalsh.name to the clipboard on Mac
curl davidwalsh.name | pbcopy
# Copy the source of davidwalsh.name to the clipboard on Windows
curl davidwalsh.name | clip
Piping pbcopy at the end of the command makes this magic possible. So what do I look forward to using this for? My colleague Luke showed me how he gets the commit hash from the master branch without needing to go to GitHub to get it:
alias ghash='git rev-parse HEAD && git rev-parse HEAD | pbcopy'
I look forward to using pbcopy more -- an excellent utility to allow me to avoid lame cursor click-hold-drag to get the output I want!
![5 More HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed]()
The HTML5 revolution has provided us some awesome JavaScript and HTML APIs. Some are APIs we knew we've needed for years, others are cutting edge mobile and desktop helpers. Regardless of API strength or purpose, anything to help us better do our job is a...
![Regular Expressions for the Rest of Us]()
Sooner or later you'll run across a regular expression. With their cryptic syntax, confusing documentation and massive learning curve, most developers settle for copying and pasting them from StackOverflow and hoping they work. But what if you could decode regular expressions and harness their power? In...
![Using jQuery and MooTools Together]()
There's yet another reason to master more than one JavaScript library: you can use some of them together! Since MooTools is prototype-based and jQuery is not, jQuery and MooTools may be used together on the same page.
The XHTML and JavaScript
jQuery is namespaced so the...
![Create a Dynamic Flickr Image Search with the Dojo Toolkit]()
The Dojo Toolkit is a treasure chest of great JavaScript classes. You can find basic JavaScript functionality classes for AJAX, node manipulation, animations, and the like within Dojo. You can find elegant, functional UI widgets like DropDown Menus, tabbed interfaces, and form element replacements within...
It may be silly to notice that this isn’t for Windows…
Might be worth adding instructions using
xcopyon Linux, andclipon WindowsI am on Linux and I use http://www.vergenet.net/~conrad/software/xsel/
Use it like this:
curl davidwalsh.name | xsel –clipboard –input
You can also alias is so you can use pbcopy
To do that add alias pbcopy=’xsel –clipboard –input’ to your ~/:bashrc
windows would be curl davidwalsh.name | clip
assuming you had curl for windows installed ;)