Copy Shell Output via the Command Line

By  on  
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!

Recent Features

  • By
    Designing for Simplicity

    Before we get started, it's worth me spending a brief moment introducing myself to you. My name is Mark (or @integralist if Twitter happens to be your communication tool of choice) and I currently work for BBC News in London England as a principal engineer/tech...

  • By
    Create a CSS Flipping Animation

    CSS animations are a lot of fun; the beauty of them is that through many simple properties, you can create anything from an elegant fade in to a WTF-Pixar-would-be-proud effect. One CSS effect somewhere in between is the CSS flip effect, whereby there's...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create Twitter-Style Dropdowns Using jQuery

    Twitter does some great stuff with JavaScript. What I really appreciate about what they do is that there aren't any epic JS functionalities -- they're all simple touches. One of those simple touches is the "Login" dropdown on their homepage. I've taken...

  • By
    Spatial Navigation

    Spatial navigation is the ability to navigate to focusable elements based on their position in a given space.  Spatial navigation is a must when your site or app must respond to arrow keys, a perfect example being a television with directional pad remote.  Firefox OS TV apps are simply...

Discussion

  1. MaxArt

    It may be silly to notice that this isn’t for Windows…

  2. Might be worth adding instructions using xcopy on Linux, and clip on Windows

  3. I 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

  4. suprsidr

    windows would be curl davidwalsh.name | clip
    assuming you had curl for windows installed ;)

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!