Re: OFFTOPIC: How about a /dev/clipboard ?

[Havoc Pennington <rhp@zirx.pair.com>]

On Tue, 25 May 1999, Jim Foltz wrote:
> 
> There are times when I need to cut and paste the output from a command
> line program into a graphical program. The problem occurs when the output
> is more than one screen long. I just thought it would be quite nice to
> be able to redirect the output into /dev/clipboard, then switch to the
> graphical program and use the mouse to paste it from /dev/clipboard to
> where I need it.
> 
> Is there a mechanism already in place to handle this?
> 

You could just redirect the command output to a file, then open the file
in an editor like Emacs (in X mode), select it there and paste it into the
graphical program. For example:

$ mycommand > file 2>&1

Where 2>&1 sends error messages to the file also; omit that part if you
only want normal output in the file.

There's also such a thing as a FIFO (first-in first-out), you use it like
this:

$ mkfifo foo
$ echo "Hello World" > foo


Then in another console or xterm:

$ cat foo
Hello World

But I don't think that's quite what you want. (Note that a second 'cat
foo' won't say "Hello World", because the FIFO is like a pipe, it doesn't
save the data.)

HTH,
Havoc