Linux Shell: Copy output into clipboard w/o using the Mouse

Well, I just tried this and it works:

echo "foo" | tee | ssh YourUsername@your.ssh.client.host pbcopy

Notes:

• I'm using echo "foo" as a stand-in for the command whose output you want to copy to your ssh client machine.
• I'm using tee so you can see it right in your terminal window instead of having it all swallowed up by the ssh command.
• By giving ssh a command to run, it will send the stdin that ssh received to that command on that other host, and then immediately return.

You could probably alias it to something simpler to type. And be sure to use ssh keys instead of password-based authentication to save yourself having to retype your password. Update: And you can use SSH Agent Forwarding so you don't have to put credentials to access your local machine on the remote box.

(NB: I'm not sure how well pbcopy/pbpaste work when you only have an ssh/tty/shell session and no Mac OS X GUI context. I think the pasteboard is a NeXTStep/Cocoa/Aqua/GUI concept, not necessarily something that exits at the Unix layer without the GUI layer.)

When I first came up with this it seemed hackish, but the more I play around with it the more I like it.

With GNU cp you can use the --parents option, like this:

cd /home/user/myfiles ; cp --parents */*/*.jpg /home2/user/myfiles/

You have to cd first because if you do cp --parents /home/user/myfiles/... it will create those parents too, and you'll end up with /home2/user/myfiles/home/parents/myfiles/.

If you need a non-GNUish answer, the traditional unix method would be tar over a pipe.

cd /home/user/myfiles ; tar cf - */*/*.jpg | ( cd /home2/user/myfiles ; tar xf - )

The second cd is in a subshell with the second tar, so that's where the files get extracted. The tarball itself is created, sent over the pipe, and extracted all at the same time. Add a v flag to one of the tars if you want progress reporting.