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!
![Welcome to My New Office]()
My first professional web development was at a small print shop where I sat in a windowless cubical all day. I suffered that boxed in environment for almost five years before I was able to find a remote job where I worked from home. The first...
![Vibration API]()
Many of the new APIs provided to us by browser vendors are more targeted toward the mobile user than the desktop user. One of those simple APIs the Vibration API. The Vibration API allows developers to direct the device, using JavaScript, to vibrate in...
![MooTools Typewriter Effect Plugin Upgrade]()
Last week I shared my MooTools Typewriter Class with you. It was pretty well received and I got a few feature requests that I've implemented including "backspacing" and character variance delays. I'm not going to explain the old code, so click here...
![Spyjax: Ajax For Evil Using Dojo]()
The idea of Spyjax is nothing new. In pasts posts I've covered how you can spy on your user's history with both MooTools and jQuery. Today we'll cover how to check user history using the Dojo Toolkit.
The HTML
For the sake of this...
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 ;)