Clipboard Filtering

April 14th, 2024
cli, tech
Here's a pattern I find pretty useful:

pbpaste | some_command | pbcopy

For example:

  • Converting spaces to tabs, for pasting into a spreadsheet program: pbpaste | tr ' ' '\t' | pbcopy

  • Converting tabs and newlines to html table formatting: pbpaste | sed 's/^/<tr><td>/' | sed 's/\t/<td>/g' | pbcopy

  • Escape angle brackets and ampersands for html: pbpaste | sed 's/&/\&amp;/g; s/</\&lt;/g; s/>/\&gt;/g;' | pbcopy (I used this on itself before pasting into this post.)

  • Convert newlines-indicate-paragraphs text to html: pbpaste | sed 's/^/<p>/' | pbcopy (I use this in putting together the kids text posts.)

  • Any time I want to do find-and-replace when working with software that doesn't support it well.

The way this works is that pbpaste reads from the clipboard as plain text, the intermediate command(s) transform the text, and the pbcopy sends it back to the clipboard.

While these are the Mac commands it should be similar elsewhere. For example, on Linux I'd use xsel, though that does require paying attention to whether you want PRIMARY (xsel) or CLIPBOARD (xsel -b).

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, mastodon

Recent posts on blogs I like:

The Psychology of Long-Firm Fraudsters

Don't do fraud!

via Thing of Things December 4, 2024

Developing the middle ground on polarized topics

Avoiding false dichotomies The post Developing the middle ground on polarized topics appeared first on Otherwise.

via Otherwise November 25, 2024

How to eat vegan on Icon of the Seas

Royal Caribbean has a new giant cruise ship, Icon of the Seas, which has a large selection of food options.

via Home November 21, 2024

more     (via openring)