Terminal – copy from CLI without using mouse

copy/pastegnome-terminalterminal

While firing commands in CLI, I want to copy the command I just fired or anything I wrote in terminal and paste it somewhere else without using mouse.

Like in following picture, I want to copy the update command (completely or partially) without using mouse and paste it somewhere.

copy from CLI without using mouse

Best Answer

You can use screen(1) within your terminal emulator of choice (xterm, gnome-terminal, ...).

The functionality you need is built-in in screen. You need to get familiar with the way it works:

by default, the "command" keybinding is Ctrl + A, you compose commands by issuing the "command" sequence plus the specific action.
the "copy" command is: AltGr + [
the "paste" command is AltGr + ]

You can "copy" the command and "paste" in another terminal.

screen is fun and once you start using it you'll wonder how it is possible you haven't been using it at all.

Related Solutions

Terminal Text Copy – How to Copy Text from One Terminal into Another

The way to do that is to use an ordinary file or a named pipe.

Why not do the scp in the original terminal in the first place (even in the background)?

If the host system uses proc, in the second terminal do cd -P /proc/PID/cwd then do your scp from . (where PID is that of the shell which is in the cwd/pwd that you are interested in).

Copy and paste a file/directory from command line

I think you should do something like the GUI applications do. My idea for doing this is to write two functions for Copy and Paste, where Copy writes path of files to be copied to a temporary file and Paste reads those paths and simply calls cp command. My implementation (to be put in .bashrc file) is like below:

function Copy {
    touch ~/.clipfiles
    for i in "$@"; do
      if [[ $i != /* ]]; then i=$PWD/$i; fi
      i=${i//\\/\\\\}; i=${i//$'\n'/$'\\\n'}
      printf '%s\n' "$i"
    done >> ~/.clipfiles
}

function Paste {
    while IFS= read src; do
      cp -Rdp "$src" .
    done < ~/.clipfiles
    rm ~/.clipfiles
}

Better scripts could be written for implementing this idea, I tested my own and it works very well for files and folders (I don't know how xclip could work for copying folders!!)

For example:

/usr/local/dir1# Copy a.txt *.cpp
/usr/local/dir1# cd /usr/local/dir2
/usr/local/dir2# Paste

/usr/local/dir1# Copy *.h *.cpp b.txt subdir1
/usr/local/dir1# cd /usr/local/dir2
/usr/local/dir2# Paste

/usr/local/dir1# Copy a.txt b.txt 
/usr/local/dir1# cd /usr/local/dir2
/usr/local/dir2# Copy c.txt d.txt
/usr/local/dir2# cd /usr/local/dir3
/usr/local/dir3# Paste

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Terminal Text Copy – How to Copy Text from One Terminal into Another

Copy and paste a file/directory from command line

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