copy and paste from terminal with keyboard in linux (ubuntu)

Question

Heyas

So I'm trying to move away from using the mouse as much as I can (just a pet project). I know that in the terminal you can do c-k to cut a line and c-u to paste that line back into that same terminal, but I'm looking for something where I can copy a line in the terminal into gnomes clipboard so I can paste it into say a browser or somesuch.

I know that if I use the mouse to highlight text, I can then hit shift-insert to paste that text, which is great, but now I just want to be able to do it without the mouse. Something like c-space highlighting in emacs (but even that doesn't copy into the gnome clipboard).

Thanks

Some more clarification, I have several different terminals open, and on many I've ssh'ed into various remote machines where utilities like xclip/xsel aren't as helpful.

Answer 1

Stated here, the default commands for GNOME copy and paste are CTRL-SHIFT-C and CTRL-SHIFT-C.

Edit: I found a useful blog post that allows you to enable terminal copy/paste to CTRL-C and CTRL-V in GNOME.

Answer 2

Might I suggest RatPoison as your window manager? As the name suggests, you don't need a mouse at all. I'm not sure how it handles the clipboard though, as I've only ever used it for fun. It may depend on what terminal program you're using.

Answer 3

For interaction with the X11 clipboard from the command line, see this question.

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Maybe a side track to what you ask for, but for terminal window interaction I can recommend screen, where you use keys to copy and paste (from a searchable scrollback buffer!). The copy and paste operation only is between screen controlled windows though like you describe with the terminal window and c-u & c-k, but you can easily dump to /tmp/screen-xchange and then use xclip to copy to the X11 clipboard.

Answer 4

For long time I was also trying to sort out it, using vt100.translations:

!! from http://www.fifi.org/doc/xterm/xterm.faq.html#future_work "XTerm*vt100.translations: #override \n\ Insert: string(\001) \n\ Shift Up: scroll-back(1,lines) \n\ Shift Down: scroll-forw(1,lines) \n\ Shift Right: string(0x1b) string("f") \n\ Shift Left: string(0x1b) string("b") \n\ Shift Delete: string(0x1b) string(0x08) \n\ Shift Tab: string(0x1b) string("*") \n\ 0x1000FF0D: scroll-back(1,page) \n\ 0x1000FF0E: scroll-forw(1,page) \n\ 0x1000FF09: string(\010) \n\ 0x1000FF0A: string(\005) \n\ BackSpace: string(0xff) \n\ Select: select-start() \n\ : select-extend() \n\ 0x1000FF02: select-end(PRIMARY,CUT_BUFFER0) \n\ Meta 0x1000FF02: select-end(CLIPBOARD) \n\ 0x1000FF04: insert-selection(PRIMARY,CUT_BUFFER0) \n\ Meta 0x1000FF04: insert-selection(CLIPBOARD) \n\ F1: string(0x1b) string("OP")

no success

OK if we have set some key for select-start select-end ..extend but how to bring cursor their.

gnu screen may be solution but, it will not properly in zsh, and we can not bring cut text in Xclipboard.

Answer 5

I know if your shell program is bash or tcsh, it uses readline library to do line editing, so the Control-K function is handled by readline and is stored in a "kill-ring" buffer inside your shell program. It is impossible to steal the contents of the kill-ring from your shell (unless your shell has specific functionality programmed into it that allow it), however you can re-configure the Control-K to perform some other action by configuring the .inputrc file in your home directory. So you could configure it to perform a macro, for example, outputting the text "xclip -in\n" and then dumping the contents of the kill-ring to the output along with a "Control-D" action to terminate the text. This is mostly all explained in the readline manpage.

I've never tried anything like it before so I don't know if that would work or not, but that's the route I would try first.

Answer 6

This is a super-clunky hack, but it works for copying the last line of output from the last run command in a terminal using only the keyboard (and a python script), and it can work over ssh.

Here's how you use it.

1. In gnome-terminal (or the like), Alt+E, A. This is to Select All.
2. If you're in ssh, open a different terminal on your local machine.
3. Run the attached script, which i call lastline on my machine.

Then you've got one line of text with no newline on your gtk clipboard. The script works by using the x selection clipboard from selecting all the terminal's text and putting the third-to-last line of it on the gtk clipboard. This script can be modified to select different parts of the x selection, which would correspond to different parts of the terminal's text buffer. However, it's still a long ways from an interactive cursor :(

It'd be great if gnome-terminal integrated keyboard-driven selection support.

This example puts "/usr/bin/gcc" on the gtk clipboard (remember to Select All before running lastline):

$ which gcc
/usr/bin/gcc
$ lastline

Here's the script i call lastline:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys, subprocess
import optparse
__version__ = "0.1"

def main():
    try:
        process = subprocess.Popen(["xsel"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
    except OSError:
        sys.exit("you must install xsel")
    (stdout, _) = process.communicate()

    lines = stdout.split("\n")
    if len(lines) < 3:
        text = ""
    else:
        text = lines[-3]

    import gtk
    clipboard = gtk.clipboard_get()
    clipboard.set_text(text)
    clipboard.store()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    parser = optparse.OptionParser(version=__version__)
    (options, args) = parser.parse_args()
    main()