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
    LightFace:  Facebook Lightbox for MooTools

    One of the web components I've always loved has been Facebook's modal dialog.  This "lightbox" isn't like others:  no dark overlay, no obnoxious animating to size, and it doesn't try to do "too much."  With Facebook's dialog in mind, I've created LightFace:  a Facebook lightbox...

  • By
    9 Mind-Blowing WebGL Demos

    As much as developers now loathe Flash, we're still playing a bit of catch up to natively duplicate the animation capabilities that Adobe's old technology provided us.  Of course we have canvas, an awesome technology, one which I highlighted 9 mind-blowing demos.  Another technology available...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    dat.gui:  Exceptional JavaScript Interface Controller

    We all love trusted JavaScript frameworks like MooTools, jQuery, and Dojo, but there's a big push toward using focused micro-frameworks for smaller purposes. Of course, there are positives and negatives to using them.  Positives include smaller JS footprint (especially good for mobile) and less cruft, negatives...

  • By
    Create Custom Events in MooTools 1.2

    Javascript has a number of native events like "mouseover," "mouseout", "click", and so on. What if you want to create your own events though? Creating events using MooTools is as easy as it gets. The MooTools JavaScript What's great about creating custom events in MooTools is...

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!