pbcopy(1) pbcopy(1)
NAME
pbcopy, pbpaste - provide copying and pasting to the pasteboard (the
Clipboard) from command line
SYNOPSIS
pbcopy [-help] [-pboard {general | ruler | find | font}]
pbpaste [-help] [-pboard {general | ruler | find | font}] [-Prefer
{ascii | rtf | ps}]
DESCRIPTION
pbcopy takes the standard input and places it in the specified paste-
board. If no pasteboard is specified, the general pasteboard will be
used by default. The input is placed in the pasteboard as ASCII data
unless it begins with the Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) file header or
the Rich Text Format (RTF) file header, in which case it is placed in
the pasteboard as one of those data types.
pbpaste removes the data from the pasteboard and writes it to the stan-
dard output. It normally looks first for ASCII data in the pasteboard
and writes that to the standard output; if no ASCII data is in the
pasteboard it looks for Encapsulated PostScript; if no EPS if present
it looks for Rich Text. If none of those types is present in the
pasteboard, pbpaste produces no output.
OPTIONS
-pboard {general | ruler | find | font}
specifies which pasteboard to copy to or paste from. If no
pasteboard is given, the general pasteboard will be used by
default.
-Prefer {ascii | rtf | ps}
tells pbpaste what type of data to look for in the pasteboard
first. As stated above, pbpaste normally looks first for ASCII
data; however, by specifying -Prefer ps you can tell pbpaste to
look first for Encapsulated PostScript. If you specify -Prefer
rtf, pbpaste looks first for Rich Text format. In any case,
pbpaste looks for the other formats if the preferred one is not
found.
SEE ALSO
ADC Reference Library:
Cocoa > Interapplication Communication > Copying and Pasting
Carbon > Interapplication Communication > Pasteboard Manager Program-
ming Guide
Carbon > Interapplication Communication > Pasteboard Manager Reference
BUGS
There is no way to tell pbpaste to get only a specified data type.
Apple Computer, Inc. January 12, 2005 pbcopy(1)
Mac OS X 10.5 - Generated Sun Oct 28 20:59:49 EDT 2007