Hi,

In command line mode, I paste highlighted text with the middle mouse button. This I gather is the contents of the clipboard. I'm pretty happy with that.

The problem is the copying before I paste ... I'm useless with the mouse you see, so I want to be able to write up a text file, save it and then "cat" it into the clipboard, so that way I can avoid mouse dragging, and be more accurate with stuff, cos I would have prepare dit beforehand.

Ideally I thought I could do a "cat mytextfile > clipboard".

Is such a thing possible (he hopes there's a special variable or device for the clipboard).

I use the word clipboard, but it might not be the right word. It's an MS word really. Hopefully though, some readers migth understand me.

Thanks!

You can use either xsel or xclip for that. Either one can copy text to or from the clipboard or the copy buffer*. xsel has slightly better functionality and easier syntax. "cat textfile | xsel -i -b" will send the text to the clipboard, for example.



*The copy buffer is a separate function from the clipboard. The first uses only text highlighting and the middle mouse button, and is of a very temporary nature (actually, it's not even a buffer, it's a data transfer function that gathers and sends the highlighted text on demand). The clipboard is a separate function that is a little more persistent, and needs to be called with the cut, copy, and paste commands.

There are programs that can keep the two forms synchronized. KDE's klipper can do it, for example.

great stuff David, thanks for answer .. I hadn't really grokked this issue, but will head off now to google and go into more depth.