Linux - copy/cut file into clipboard
When you press Ctrl-C over a file in the file manager, the file's contents IS NOT copied to the clipboard. A simple test: select a file in file manager, press Ctrl-C, open a text editor, press Ctrl-V. The result is not file's contents but its full path.
In reality the situation is a bit more complicated because you can't do the opposite - copy a list of filenames from a text editor and paste them into file manager.
To copy some data from command line to X11 clipboard you can use xclip
command, which can be installed with
sudo apt-get install xclip
to copy contents of a file or output of some command to clipboard use
cat ./myfile.txt|xclip -i
the text can be then pasted somewhere using middle mouse button (this is called "primary selection buffer").
If you want to copy data to the "clipboard" selection, so it can be pasted into an application with Ctrl-V, you can do
cat ./myfile.txt|xclip -i -selection clipboard
To be able to copy files from the command line and paste them in a file manager, you need to specify a correct "target atom" so the file manager recognizes the data in the clipboard, and also provide the data in correct format - luckily, in case of copying files in a file manager it's just a list of absolute filenames, each on a new line, something which is easy to generate using find
command:
find ${PWD} -name "*.pdf"| xclip -i -selection clipboard -t text/uri-list
(at least this works for me in KDE). Now you can wrap into a small script which you can call, say, cb
:
#!/bin/sh
xclip -i -selection clipboard -t text/uri-list
then you put it in ~/bin
, set executable bit on it and use it like this:
find ${PWD} -name "*.txt"| cb
Nice, isn't it?
Related videos on Youtube
![Black](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QASBU.jpg?s=256&g=1)
Comments
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Black almost 2 years
I was wondering if it is possible to copy or cut a file into the clipboard and then paste it to another directory later on. I did a quick research and only found information on how to copy the content of a file into the clipboard, but not the file itself.
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Xen2050 about 8 yearsThis is how most file managers work, right? Cut/copy a file from one folder, navigate to another folder and paste, it moves or copies the file. It only stores the filename/path in the "real" clipboard. What program are you using? Or do you want to delete/move the file first, and then pick a destination for it second? That sounds like using a temp folder (like /tmp) is required, cut & paste to temp first, then cut & paste from temp to real destination.
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Black about 8 yearsWhat do you mean, what program am i using? I just use the console and try to copy or cut a file and then
cd
to another directory and paste it there. -
Xen2050 about 8 yearsYou mean in bash, in a terminal? Like in ubuntu, searching for & running "Terminal"? Bash can do cut & yank on the command line, with ctrl-K or W & others, and ctrl-Y, but that's a little different
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Black about 8 yearsThank you. It is way more complicated then i expected though.
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manjesh23 about 8 yearsTry this should work. Help me with the feedback as well after testing.
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Black about 8 yearsI tried it and it works. But i needed to put the
cb
script not to the home directory~/bin
, i had to put it to the/bin
folder which is in the root directory. It seems like your solution is only for the purpose of copying the content of a file, but i try to copy/cut the file itself so i can copy it to another location. Just like i would usectrl+c
orctrl+x
and then paste it to another location, but all in the console. Excuse my english. -
manjesh23 about 8 yearsGot you, let me check on this and will keep you posted.
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oᴉɹǝɥɔ almost 5 yearsTo prevent echo from appending EOL characters to the echoed content use "echo -n 'blah'"
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stegetsj over 3 yearsIt is not work as I want. I want copy file as drag-to-drop. When I copy from file-menager to textarea with only text then, yeah, I get the path to file. But if textarea is with drag-to-drop then nothing happens or it sends path to file. But from nemo I send file not text.
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efreed over 2 yearspbcopy is exactly what I was looking for, I was wanting to pipe a command's output to the clipboard. So a different answer to the OP's question could be: cat filepath | pbcopy
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Flavio over 2 years@efreed glad to help.