clipboard() function

[Jacob Quinn]

Hey everyone,

As a feature I use all the time in R (to paste into excel and send to someone, play with a graph, etc.), I've created a start for copying objects to the clipboard. As of now the below code is Windows only (I did just set up a Linux vmbox, but I haven't had a chance to play with it much yet). Any who'd like to contribute for Linux/Mac compatibility, that'd be great. As of now, it uses the show() function result of an object to copy to the clipboard.

I thought about a package, but as it's a single function, I thought I'd just upload this to let others hack on it. Eventually this probably belongs as a method to write() or dlmwrite() and a global clipboard stream object could be specified. Just an idea.

Cheers.

function clipboard(x)

#determine number of bytes needed to allocate

obj = bytestring(string(x))

bytes = length(obj)

if(ccall( (:OpenClipboard, "user32"), stdcall, Bool, (Ptr{Void},), C_NULL) )

#Empty the clipboard

ccall( (:EmptyClipboard, "user32"), stdcall, Bool, () )

#Allocate space on the system for copying

ptr = ccall( (:GlobalAlloc, "kernel32"), stdcall,

Ptr{Void}, (Uint16,Int32), 2,bytes+1)

ptr = ccall( (:GlobalLock, "kernel32"), stdcall,

Ptr{Void}, (Ptr{Void},), ptr)

#Copy data to allocated space

r = ccall(:memcpy, Ptr{Void}, (Ptr{Void},Ptr{Uint8},Int32), ptr, obj, length(obj) + 1 )

ccall( (:GlobalUnlock, "kernel32"), stdcall,

Void, (Ptr{Void},), ptr)

#Set clipboard data type

ptr = ccall( (:SetClipboardData, "user32"), stdcall,

Ptr{Void}, (Uint32, Ptr{Void}), 1, ptr)

ccall( (:CloseClipboard, "user32"), stdcall,

Void, (), )

else

error("Could not copy object to clipboard")

end

end

[John Myles White]

I'm sure there's an official way to do this, but you could get started in OS X by piping to pbcopy:

function clipboard(x)
pathname, io = mktemp()
show(io, x)
close(io)
run(`cat $pathname` | `pbcopy`)
end

-- John

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>
>

[Jameson Nash]

pipes are fancy enough that you should be able to write that as simply
```clipboard(x) = Base.writeall(`pbcopy`, string(x))```

and of course the complementary function:

```clipboard() = readall(`pbpaste`)```

--

[John Myles White]

Nice! I really need to get a handle on the IO work that you and Keno have done.

 -- John

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[Robert Ennis]

This is a neat idea, Jacob!

On Linux, if you have xsel installed, Jameson's Mac version works with a simple change:

clipboard(x) = Base.writeall(`xsel -ib`, string(x))
clipboard()   = readall(`xsel -ob`)

This is really clean and nice.  Awesome work on the IO features, Keno and Jameson!

--Rob

[Stefan Karpinski]

We should add clipboard([x]) to all platforms.

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[Viral Shah]

It would indeed be awesome to have clipboard() on all platforms.

-viral

[Stefan Karpinski]

Advanced versions could use appropriate mime types and special formatting to communicate easily with Excel and such.

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[Alan Edelman]

I'd love a from_clipboard, but I think I just want

x=begin strings

   <cntrl v>

end strings

[Alan Edelman]

Julia never ceases to amaze me

I can type

v=" <cntrl v>"

words=split(v,'\n')

and can be amazingly happy

[Stefan Karpinski]

I just added the OS X version of this function to base:

http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/stdlib/base/#Base.clipboard

Jacob, if you could add your Windows version, that would be great. Someone on Linux want to take a crack at that version?

Alan, now you can just do this:

julia> split(clipboard())

24-element Array{String,1}:

 "United"

 "States"

 "United"

 "States"

 "Germany"

 "United"

 "States"

 "Germany"

 "China"

 "France"

 "Italy"

 "United"

 "States"

 "United"

 "States"

 "France"

 "China"

 "United"

 "States"

 "United"

 "Kingdom"

 "United"

 "States"

 "Japan"

[Alan Edelman]

ooh , i'm even more impressed

[Stefan Karpinski]

You should use the split(clipboard(),"\n") since I accidentally turned United States into two entries.