The Old New Thing

This program is solid gold!

(Now what's the equivalent PowerShell cmdlet ...)

Seems to work on XP64 also

But... if you need to install perl, you already lost! Right? :)

I made my own version of clip.exe, when run with empty std in, it displays the current clipboard, run on every version of windows since nt4/9x and it is still smaller than the MS version

Interesting; I have a short little C program I wrote that does the same thing.  Cygwin also comes with the /dev/clipboard pseudofile which does the same thing, see http://williammitchell.blogspot.com/2008/03/fun-with-cygwins-devclipboard.html , although it doesn't show up by default under a directory listing of /dev.  Use http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2004-03/txt00028.txt to fix that.

For the Mac OS X users out there, there are the command line utilities pbcopy and pbpaste for copying to and pasting from the pasteboard.

ipconfig /all | clip && notepad then ctrl-v

The most excellent 4NT uses the pseudo-file clip: for the same thing, and it works for both input and output:

dir /s > clip:

type clip:

4NT, JPsoft's cmd.exe replacement, extends the command prompt elegantly with the CLIP: pseudo-device. Thus:

echo hello > clip:

echo there >> clip:

type clip:

and so on.

Nifty. xclip is the X11 equivalent, by the way.

for those on cygwin

$ putclip --help

putclip version 0.2.0

 Copy stdin to the Windows Clipboard

Usage: putclip [OPTION...]

General options

 -d, --dos         Clipboard text will have DOS line endings.

 -u, --unix        Clipboard text will have UNIX line endings.

 -n, --no-conv     Do not translate line endings.

Help options

 -?, --help        Show this help message

 --usage           Display brief usage message

 --version         Display version information

 --license         Display licensing information

NOTE: by default, no line ending conversion is performed.

$ getclip --help

getclip version 0.2.0

 Copy the Windows Clipboard to stdout

Usage: getclip [OPTION...]

General options

 -d, --dos         Output text will have DOS line endings.

 -u, --unix        Output text will have UNIX line endings.

 -n, --no-conv     Do not translate line endings.

Help options

 -?, --help        Show this help message

 --usage           Display brief usage message

 --version         Display version information

 --license         Display licensing information

NOTE: by default, no line ending conversion is performed.

winclip

http://dmst.aueb.gr/dds/sw/outwit/winclip.html

is a nifty windows executable that does both

> For the opposite direction, I use a little perl script

Now you have two problems.

I wrote utilities that did this many years ago, I called my ccopy and ppaste. They also handled files names as well as text. You could ccopy *.* and the paste the files into explorer. Or you could paste the files names into notepad.

Unfortunately they are lost in the sands of time.

I found this worked just find in PowerShell on Windows 7

PS C:\> ps | clip.exe

@Mark

>> For the opposite direction, I use a little perl script

>Now you have two problems.

perl is a problem? what's the problem with perl?

In unix environments perl is almost a part of the system... Doesn't seem to bother them...

I wouldn't say that it hurts to have it around in Windows either... more if you're a developer.

Bounus: try out App::Ack. It's like grep on steroids for developers. Think it works on Windows too :)

Wow. What's with people suddenly not realising that "now you have two problems" is a joke? Collective SOHF much?

@pplu:  Mark's comment was an echo of Raymond's old post that said something like "When faced with a problem, some people say "I know!  I'll use regular expressions".  Now you have two problems."  [The second problem is installing some software that can do regular expressions.]

I think Raymond reacted a little harshly to Mark's comment; after all, Mark may have said it half in jest.  :-)

It was indeed in jest, although I was a little concerned Raymond's heard that one before.  But seriously, how would you do the same without Perl?  In a bind, I'd probably use ntsd.

Anyway, since it's clearly smiley time, pplu: that's like saying "it's easy with Powershell" to a Unix admin ;-)

clip.exe is The Best Program Ever.  Well, second best, because I wrote my own basically as soon as I could code on Windows.  Essential for command prompt people everywhere.

>Wow. What's with people suddenly not realising that

>"now you have two problems" is a joke?

A joke used by people as big of dicks as jwz.

I have been using gclip and pclip from UnxUtils (http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/) for years

woa woa woa!... I've seen people come up with powershell scripts for this purpose

Is there any central resource to find this and other built in command line tools? (did a few searches, got nothing useful back)

I basically wrote my own version in C#, which supports reading and writing to the clipboard, as well as writing a string from the command-line.

@Someone else - right with you. i jumped on Google to search for the powershell equiv before I even finished the article. All I could find is this community extension (PSCX):

http://keithhill.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!5A8D2641E0963A97!680.entry

@Raymond - come on... you had to know what the response would be as soon as you typed "Perl". Don't take it personally ;-)

"I think Raymond reacted a little harshly to Mark's comment; after all, Mark may have said it half in jest.  :-)"

People come here knowing that Raymond has "the social skills of a thermonuclear device"!

Thanks for the post.  You've saved me hundreds of minutes.

For mac users in this thread, you have the same magic with 'pbcopy/pbpaste'.

@pplu Yes, ack works on Windows as well.  It's a standalone program you can download as a single file.  See http://betterthangrep.com/

I've had to eschew many Unix-specific changes in the name of keeping ack platform-neutral.

In Powershell and if you are running Windows 7 you don't need to install anything:

function p {

add-type -an system.windows.forms

[System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard]::GetText()

}

<i>...I use a little perl script:</i>

When, oh when, will Windows start including useful scripting languages like Python and Perl in the box as a standard install?  Mac & Linux do this and it is so incredibly useful to know you've got scripting languages installed when sharing things like this.

Windows *does* include a useful scripting language like Python or Perl. Three, actually: VBScript, JScript and PowerShell.

Tis sounds like a half-written program (but a very useful one). Would it be so hard to add a command-line option to take the clipboard contents (text only, of course) and pipe it to stdout? Or would there be problems with that?

Ages ago I wrote a similiar program, that depending on its executable name would copy the contents to the clipboard, or paste the contents of the clipboard.  It could also copy stdin to a new notepad session bypassing the clipboard.

Maybe one day I'll release it, though I've always assumed something like this is one of the first things a dev writes for themselves.

J Peterson: Out of curiosity, what makes you think it doesn't?

Even if you don't count Batch as a scripting language (and I wouldn't blame you), there's VBScript and JScript. JScript isn't very popular, but VBScript is used all over. And of any current Windows version will have PowerShell as well.

And it's not like VBScript is new-- I remember fiddling around with it in Windows 98.

Of course, you're probably going to use the common "out" of saying "I said USEFUL scripting languages!" implying that VBScript, which thousands of people use daily, isn't "useful" in some way.

alt+space e p puts the clipboard on the command line, no?

Console paste works well when you're using it with something that won't bail out halfway through your paste (which in my case is usually vim in paste mode).

@WndSks

It also probably crashes on some large percentage of configurations.

A fair amount of Raymond's posts do explain the great lengths that MS has gone to ensure minimal compatibility issues.

... "Oh you need to uninstall <insert-essential program-name-here> and it will stop crashing"

>> Would it be so hard to add a command-line option to take the clipboard contents (text only, of course) and pipe it to stdout?

Do one thing and do it well...

clip.exe to read to the clipboard

clop.exe to write clipboard to stdout

Please continue, these tips are really helpful and interesting

Windows 3.x and 9x had a DOS interface for accessing the clipboard. It was INT 2F 17xx. Read about it in Ralf Brown's Interrupt List.

It's in Server 2003.  A version is also in one of the resource kits (2000?  98? Who knows, it goes with me everywhere)

CLIP v2.2 - Command line Clipboard Utility

Copyright (c) 1998,99 by Dave Navarro, Jr. (dave@basicguru.com)

Usage: CLIP [filename] [options]

 filename        Text file to be read and placed into the clipboard.

                 Long filenames are supported.

 /r              Reads any text in the clipboard and writes to the

                 the specified 'filename'.

No perl necessary with that version.

And why was the more useful clipboard viewer removed?

@someone:

You might want to install it from your Windows CD as per http://www.computertim.com/howto/article.php?topic=windows&idn=93

@WndSks

"and it is still smaller than the MS version"

Yes, I could do that as well, but compatibility, SDL standards, and idiot proofing; would make it a bit larger.

I recommend the really small UnxUtils package at

http://sourceforge.net/projects/unxutils/

which is a Win32 port of some Unix commands.  It contains the pclip and gclip commands for working with the clipboard as well.

For instance,

pclip | sort | gclip

would sort the text on the clipboard.

You can also take the version out of 2003 and copy it to XP and it works fine there.

Possibly you can do this with the Vista one to XP too, but I haven't tried (it might be the exact same code).

More: http://wp.me/p2I5L-y

@echobeach2:

ipconfig /all >%temp%\ipconfig.txt && notepad %temp%\ipconfig.txt

And then you don't need Ctrl-V, which doesn't get saved in the command history

Regarding the size of clip.exe: DIR reports that it's 32,256 bytes on my Windows 7 64-bit installation. Is that considered large? Why this obsession with "smaller"? Correct wins every time.

Conversely (and for completeness, the perl equivalent to put text on the clipboard:

use Win32::Clipboard;

local $/=undef;

Win32::Clipboard::Set(<>);

@Gaspar: It's not like this is a complex program we are talking about here

@Dale: What idiot proofing?, it has no options, it only does one of two things depending on whether stdin is empty or not. It is smaller because it is written in VC6 pure win32 with no runtime libs (No about/usage description either, there is still some padding in the file so it _could_ be added and still stay @ 2kb)

>> @Dale: What idiot proofing?, it has no options, it only does one of two things depending on whether stdin is empty or not.

What about the simple idiot case of your batch file calls a program which legitimately outputs zero bytes and instead of the data being piped into the clipboard, (eg clipboard being emptied and a CF_TEXT handle of zero bytes being put into the clipboard), the viewer pops up instead.

@porter: I just checked my source, the actual logic is:

display current clipboard if: we did not just set it OR stdout is redirected

meaning: "echo.foo|clip|cat" will both copy foo to the clipboard and print foo, "output0|clip" will not output anything

"I have been using gclip and pclip from UnxUtils for years"

How did I not know about those?  I've had those on my computer for years and didn't know it!

>> I've had those on my computer for years and didn't know it!

Whereas I've had clipbrd.exe since Windows 1.0 and used it all those years, and now I don't because MS has taken it away.

@Mark

> Anyway, since it's clearly smiley time, pplu: that's like saying "it's easy with Powershell" to a Unix admin ;-)

Joke understood. +1 Smiley :D

GregM: I bet you didn't know about gplay, either