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pbcopy, Copy data from STDIN to the clipboard

The pbcopy command in macOS allows you to copy data from the standard input (STDIN) to the clipboard. By default, it uses the general pasteboard, but you can specify a different one with the -pboard option. For example, to copy the contents of a file to the clipboard, you can use:

cat filename.txt | pbcopy

This command reads the contents of filename.txt and copies them to the clipboard.

Examples#

Copy a list of files in your home directory to the macOS clipboard:

$ ls ~ | pbcopy

Copy the contents of a file to the clipboard:

$ pbcopy < cookies.txt

Copy part of a file to the clipboard:

$ grep 'ip address' serverlist.txt | pbcopy