Automatically copy the selected content to clipboard

The following will work only if vim --version indicates that you have +xterm_clipboard feature. If not, you will have to install extra packages or recompile vim with that feature added.

There are actually two options for this:

"+y

copies to the "usual" clipboard buffer (so you can paste using Ctrl+V, right click and select "Paste" etc), while

"*y

copies to the X11 selection - you can paste from this buffer using middle click.

Note that "* and "+ work both ways. So if you have selected some text in another application, you can paste it into vim using "*p and if you have copied some text (using, say, Ctrl-C) then you can paste it into vim using "+p.

You could do something like:

while xclip -o -sel c && echo; do
  xclip -i -quiet -sel c <> /dev/null >&0 2>&0
done > file

xclip -o -sel c dumps the content of the CLIPBOARD selection. xclip -i -quiet -sel c claims ownership of the CLIPBOARD selection (and makes it empty) until something else claims it again. If you have a clipboard manager running, you may want to disable it as it would probably interfere.