use less on content in clipboard

Question

I copied some text and want to search through it using less. I wonder how I can directly use less on my clipboard content without having it saved first into a file or being echod etc.

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 23 '19 at 18:43

Use xclip or xsel (which should available on any Linux distribution and in BSD ports).

For the X11 selection that is automatically copied when you select something with the mouse:

xsel | less
xclip -o | less

For the X11 clipboard that is copied explicitly (typically with Ctrl+C):

xsel -b | less
xclip -o -selection c | less

On macOS, use pbpaste.

pbpaste | less

See Copy the contents of a file into the clipboard without displaying its contents for more information.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 23 '19 at 16:55

Under X11 this won't work because of the way the clipboards are integrated.

First of all, there are two clipboards in use:

Something you selected
Something you copied with a hotkey (like ctrl + c)

Programs can use both or either of those clipboards.

The whole process works a bit like this:

Client A                    X Server                    Client B
----------------------------------------------------------------

(1) |  I own selection FOO!    |
    |  ------------------->    |


                               |  Write sel. FOO to BAR!  | (2)
                               |  <---------------------  |


    | Write sel. FOO to BAR!   |
    | <---------------------   |


    |     Here is FOO.
    | -------------------------:----------------------->  |


                                     Okay, got it.        |
    | <------------------------:------------------------  |

(source)

If you want to use clipboard content in your terminal workflow, you could use something like xclip and alias them to a command of your choice.

I'm not sure what you're referring to in the first sentence, but the existence of xclip shows that it's possible. — Gilles 'SO- stop being evil', Oct 23 '19 at 18:44
it works if there is a program acting as someone pasting the stuff and providing it in a file or some other way — Simon, Oct 24 '19 at 08:56

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 23 '19 at 19:08

Here's a more low-tech way:

You've copied something, right? So if you hit Shift-Insert or whatever, it will paste, right?

$ cat | less

Now press Shift+Insert then Ctrl+C

Voila! You can now scroll up and down and search and do whatever you want with less, operating on the clipboard text you pasted in.

Note that Ctrl+D will not work to terminate the input to cat in this case. I'm not sure why, but it didn't on FreeBSD nor on Ubuntu.

the simpliest way and no need of any tools – xetra11 Oct 24 '19 at 08:01 — xetra11, Oct 24 '19 at 08:01

use less on content in clipboard

3 Answers3