A Linux command-line tool to access the clipboard

"command line interface to X selections (clipboard) "
— xclip [man pages]

In short, this Linux command-line tool is used to access the [X WIndow] [clipboard]. Using various commandline options, it's possible to copy from or to various X clipboards. As with many such tools, it's often used to [pipe] to or from other commands. In fact I use it this way to generate an accurate word count for each of my writeups, as seen below.

$ xclip -h Usage: xclip [OPTION] [FILE]... Access an X server selection for reading or writing. -i, -in read text into X selection from standard input or files (default) -o, -out prints the selection to standard out (generally for piping to a file oranother program) -l, -loops number of selection requests to wait for before exiting -d, -display X display to connect to (eg localhost:0") -h, -help usage information -selection selection to access ("primary", "secondary", "clipboard" or "buffer-cut") -noutf8 don't treat text as utf-8, use old unicode -target use the given target atom -rmlastnl remove the last newline character if present -version version information -silent errors only, run in background (default) -quiet run in foreground, show what's happening -verbose running commentary

To understand its value, here's the command line I use to count words: xclip -o | wc -w|xclip -rmlastnl -selection clipboard. I copy the displayed text from E2 and just hit that command. xclip grabs the clipboard contents (the displayed writeup, pipes it to [wc] (which counts the words!), the output of that is piped to xclip again, which removes the trailing newline and pumps it to the [xWIndow] clipboard, ready to paste into the writeup. Easy, takes me seconds, and all I have to do is come back to E2 and paste it in the correct place [angzarr|⍼ ⍼]

Not running Linux? Well, Apple's OS should give you access to the command line, and I just bet that xclip is included in there. Windows has the [Windows Subsystem for Linux] and boy howdy, you bet that any Linux distro you install will have it too.xclip -o | wc -w | xclip -rmlastnl -selection clipboard gives me the wordcount of the clipboard contents, which I use for each of my writeups. ddate | xclip -selection clipboard allows me to get the [Discordian calendar|Discordian date]: Today is Setting Orange, the 57th day of Discord in the YOLD 3190 .

$ xclip -o | wc -w 367

xclip (thing)