Terminal – Safely Pasting Text in MacOS

terminal

I paste filenames/etc into Terminal all the time, and occasionally the contents of the clipboard isn't what I expect.

Often the result is several hundred lines of text (eg, source code) pasted into the command prompt, triggering god only knows what nastiness.

Is there some way to prevent bash from blindly executing whatever I paste in? I wish it would just paste the text, and let me decide after if I wanna execute it.

Best Answer

Assuming you are using bash: If you activate emacs shortcuts with set -o emacs you can also use Emacs to edit the command line:

Type Ctrl-XCtrl-E at the prompt to start Emacs
Paste and edit your clipboard content into the Emacs buffer
Use Ctrl-XCtrl-C to exit Emacs and automatically run the command(s).

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Terminal Auto-complete – Enhancing Open Command Efficiency

_complete_open() {
        COMPREPLY=()
        local cur="${COMP_WORDS[$COMP_CWORD]}"
        local prev="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}"
        [[ "$cur" == -* || "$prev" != '-a' ]] && return
        apps="$(mdfind kMDItemKind==Application -onlyin /Applications -onlyin ~/Applications -onlyin /Developer -onlyin ~/Developer | grep -v '/.*/.*/.*/.*/' | sed -E 's|.*/||g;s|\.app$||g' | uniq)"$'Finder\nArchive Utility\nCharacterPalette\nKeyboardViewer'
        local IFS=$'\n'
        if [[ "${cur:0:1}" = '"' || "${cur:0:1}" = "'" ]]; then
            quote="${cur:0:1}"
            cur="${cur:1}"
        fi
        local found="$(grep -i "^$cur" <<< "$apps")"
        if [[ "$quote" == '"' ]]; then
            found="$(sed "s|^|\"|g;s|$|\"|g" <<< "$found")"
        elif [[ "$quote" == "'" ]]; then
            found="$(sed "s|^|'|g;s|$|'|g" <<< "$found")"
        else
            found="$(sed 's| |\\ |g' <<< "$found")"
        fi
        COMPREPLY=($found)
}

complete -o default -F _complete_open open

Third version, which should now both be case insensitive and work within quotes.

Pasting commands from TextWrangler to Terminal (applescript troubleshooting)

Was cmd from R64's AppleScript dictionary or something?

You can run a command in Terminal with the do script verb.

tell application "Terminal"
    do script with command the_selection in window 1
end tell

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Terminal Auto-complete – Enhancing Open Command Efficiency

Pasting commands from TextWrangler to Terminal (applescript troubleshooting)

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