vim: copy selection to OS X clipboard

Question

There must be a really simple solution here that I'm missing:

Say you've got an area selected in vim. How can you copy it into the OS X clipboard?

(Hint: the OS X clipboard can be written to via pipe to /usr/bin/pbcopy)

Answer 1

double-quote asterisk ("*) before any yank command will yank the results into the copy buffer. That works for Windows and Linux too.

Answer 2

command-C? This at least works for the vim launched from within Terminal.app for text selected with mouse.

Answer 3

Depending on which version of vim I use, I'm able to use the + register to access the clipboard.

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Mac_OS_X_clipboard_sharing may have some ideas that work for you as well.

Answer 4

You can use MacVim when you're on a Mac to easily access the clipboard using the standard OS keys.

It's also fully backward compatible with normal Vim, so I don't even have to have a separate .vimrc.

Answer 5

If the clipboard is enabled, you can copy a selected region to the clipboard by hitting "*y

To see if it is enabled, o a vim --version and look for +clipboard or -clipboard. For example, it's not enabled by default on my 10.5.6 box:

% which vim
/usr/bin/vim
% vim --version
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.2 (2008 Aug 9, compiled Nov 11 2008 17:20:43)
Included patches: 1-22
Compiled by [email protected]
Normal version without GUI.  Features included (+) or not (-):
...
-clientserver -clipboard +cmdline_compl +cmdline_hist +cmdline_info +comments
...

If it had been compiled with +clipboard, I'd be able to use the "* register to access the system clipboard.

I downloaded the 7.2 source and compiled it (easy as tar xjf vim-7.2.tar.bz && cd vim72 && ./configure && make && sudo make install), and the clipboard was enabled:

% which vim
/usr/local/bin/vim
% vim --version
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.2 (2008 Aug 9, compiled Mar 24 2009 17:31:52)
Compiled by [email protected]
Normal version with GTK2 GUI.  Features included (+) or not (-):
...
+clientserver +clipboard +cmdline_compl +cmdline_hist +cmdline_info +comments
...

However, even after compiling, I couldn't copy to the clipboard when running vim in Terminal.app, only in X11.app.

Answer 6

For MacVim and Windows Gvim, simply add the following to your ~/.vimrc:

set clipboard=unnamed

Now all operations such as yy, D, and P work with the clipboard. No need to prefix them with "* or "+.

Answer 7

For Ubuntu users, the package you want to retrieve for using the clipboard is vim-full. The other packages (vim-tiny, vim) do not include the clipboard feature.

Answer 8

Fakeclip implements the + and * buffers if they aren't natively supported.

Answer 9

If you are using MacPorts you can upgrade your VIM to include clipboard support via:

port install vim +x +x11

Now you use the "+ register to yank your text directly to your Mac clipboard. Works like a charm.

Answer 10

This is what I'm struggling with:

1. Open a local terminal.
2. SSH to another machine.
3. Open a file with vim, or vimx
4. enter visual selection mode and select some text
5. Now I want to copy this to my system clipboard...can't seem to do this.

I've tried "+y "*y and set clipboard=unnamed

None of this seems to copy the vim visual blocked text to my system clipboard of any kind...

This would very helpful - but even more so when using vimdiff, where a regular mouse-based selection will not work - or if you have line numbers showing in vim.

thanks.

Answer 11

Command-c works for me in both MacVim and in the terminal.