Emacs command to cut OR copy to system clipboard

clipboardcopy/pastecutemacskeyboard shortcuts

As a very new Emacs user, I've been using Ctrl+w and Ctrl+y to cut/copy and paste between buffers in Emacs. Is there a way to do the same thing so that not just Emacs, but the entire system, can have access to what I am copying and pasting? Thanks.

P.S. I would like to do this in Linux (in a terminal emulator running under X) and Mac OS X (e.g. with Terminal).

Best Answer

On Linux, you can use xclip.el (https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/xclip.el) to link the kill-ring to the clipboard from Emacs running in terminal (without losing the multiple-kill and yank capability).

To install: M-x package-install RET xclip RET. To use, just add (xclip-mode 1) to your ~/.emacs.

This didn't exist on Mac, so I modified xclip.el to work with the OSX pbcopy and pbpaste utilities. The result, pbcopy.el, is available here: https://gist.github.com/1023272

Related Solutions

Copy / paste text selections between tmux and the clipboard

Use the following tmux.conf with copy-pipe in the new versions of tmux (1.8+):

set -g mouse on
# To copy:
bind-key -n -t emacs-copy M-w copy-pipe "xclip -i -sel p -f | xclip -i -sel c "

# To paste:
bind-key -n C-y run "xclip -o | tmux load-buffer - ; tmux paste-buffer"

prefix+[ into copy-mode
select content with mouse(hold)
M-w to copy that part into system clipboard
C-y the paste it inside tmux, C-v to paste it inside other regular application like web browser.

Access X11’s clipboard from tty1-6

I don't have an X11 machine around so I can't verify this myself, but you might want to look at a program like xclip:

xclip is a command line interface to the X11 clipboard.

That won't exactly let you paste into your current tty, but it should at least print the contents of the clipboard to stdout. Then you can capture that into a file, or pipe it to a command, etc:

DISPLAY=:0 xclip -o | sort

Your DISPLAY environment variable needs to point to your X11 display, which is unlikely to be set by default, so you'll want to set that as above, or like the following if you want it to be around for the duration of your shell session:

export DISPLAY=:0
xclip -o

(This may need tweaking if your display isn't :0 or if you need to deal with Xauthority issues, etc.)

I found this article about it as well which may be helpful: http://www.susegeek.com/utility/xclip-copy-contents-from-command-line-to-x-clipboard-in-opensuse/

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Copy / paste text selections between tmux and the clipboard

Access X11’s clipboard from tty1-6

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