how do i paste something from buffer Directly to file using terminal in ubuntu?

Question

Recently, i'd copied some text from browser and i was too lazy too go and paste it in file by using file explorer. i was wandering if i can paste it directly to the file by just using terminal and some commands. any suggestions?

Solution 1

You can use cat, with a here document e.g.

cat > somefile

hit Enter then paste from the default buffer with a middle click or standard terminal emulator shortcut Ctrl+Shift+V, and terminate the input with Ctrl+D.

Ex.

$ cat > somefile
foo
bar
baz
^D

Use >> in place of > if you want to append to somefile instead of overwrite it.

Solution 2

You can use xclip (sudo apt install xclip) for that:

xclip -se c -o       # print the clipboard's content to stdout
xclip -se c -o >out  # print the clipboard's content to file named “out” 

• -se c – use the clipboard selection, leave out or change to -se p to use the default buffer instead (the default buffer holds the last thing you selected, e.g. by double-clicking a word)
• -o – print to stdout
• >out – redirect stdout to file named out overwriting it, change to >>out to append to the file's content

See man xclip (How can I get help on terminal commands?) for more.

Comments

[sudodus]

You can paste it onto the command line and use an echo command line to write it into a file like the following, echo 'this text is pasted here' > file.txt or if you want to append to the end of a file, echo 'this text is pasted here' >> file.txt