yank
Yank terminal output to clipboard.
Description
The
yank(1)
utility reads input from stdin and display a selection interface that allows a
field to be selected and copied to the clipboard.
Fields are either recognized by a regular expression using the -g option or by
splitting the input on a delimiter sequence using the -d option.
Using the arrow keys will move the selected field.
The interface supports several Emacs and Vi like key bindings,
consult the man page for further reference.
Pressing the return key will invoke the yank command and write the selected
field to its stdin.
The yank command defaults to
xsel(1)
but could be anything that accepts input on stdin.
When invoking yank,
everything supplied after the -- option will be used as the yank command,
see examples below.
Motivation
Others including myself consider it a cache miss when resort to using the mouse.
Copying output from the terminal is still one of the few cases where I still use
the mouse.
Several terminal multiplexers solves this issue,
however I don't want to be required to use a multiplexer but instead use a
terminal agnostic solution.
Examples
-
Yank an environment variable key or value:
$ env, yank -d = -
Yank a field from a CSV file:
$ yank -d \", <file.csv -
Yank a whole line using the
-loption:$ make 2>&1, yank -l -
If
stdoutis not a terminal the selected field will be written tostdout
and exit without invoking the yank command.
Kill the selected PID:$ ps ux, yank -g [0-9]+, xargs kill -
Yank the selected field to the clipboard as opposed of the default primary
clipboard:$ yank -- xsel -b
Installation
Arch Linux
On AUR:
$ yaourt -S yank
Debian
On testing and unstable:
$ sudo apt-get install yank
The binary is installed at /usr/bin/yank-cli due to a naming conflict.
Fedora
Versions 24/25/26/Rawhide:
$ sudo dnf install yank
The binary is installed at /usr/bin/yank-cli due to a naming conflict.
Man-pages are available as both yank and yank-cli.
Nix/NixOS
$ nix-env -i yank
openSUSE
$ zypper install yank
macOS
$ brew install yank
FreeBSD
$ pkg install yank
OpenBSD
$ pkg_add yank
From source
The install directory defaults to /usr/local:
$ make install
Change the install directory using the PREFIX variable:
$ make PREFIX=DIR install
The default yank command can be defined using the YANKCMD variable.
For instance,
macOS users would prefer pbcopy(1):
$ make YANKCMD=pbcopy
License
Copyright (c) 2019 Anton Lindqvist.
Distributed under the MIT license.