Unable to have pbcopy -clipboard inside Screen

Question

Problem Not solved although one answer was accepted: We are working to get Jonah's code to work.

Problem: to change the code of (1) to (2)

I know the thread. I want to be able to run the following code inside Screen

Code (1)

cat ~/.vimrc | pbcopy                   (1)

Code (2)

cat ~/.vimrc > /tmp/pbcopy.pipe         (2)

My attempt to solve the problem: to put the following code to .zshrc

function pbcopy() { "(cat \"$1\")"  > /tmp/pbcopy.pipe } 

I get

cat masi | pbcopy          
pbcopy: command not found: (cat "")
cat: masi: No such file or directory

How can you use pbcopy inside Screen?

Answer 1

Alright, this is a screwy answer, but it is also a screwy question, so at least they match. You can create a named pipe with mkfifo, and then setup an infinite loop that reads files from the named pipe and pipes them to pbcopy (or xsel, xclip, etc.).

1. In a terminal which is NOT in a screen session (run this only once):

/usr/bin/mkfifo /tmp/pbcopy.pipe
while true; do /bin/cat /tmp/pbcopy.pipe | /usr/bin/pbcopy; done

You may want to turn this into a shell script like (this probably should be more robust)

#!/bin/bash

if [[ -e /tmp/pbcopy.pipe ]]; then
    echo "it looks like I am already running"
    echo "remove /tmp/pbcopy.pipe if you are certain I am not"
    exit 1
fi

while true; do
    /bin/cat /tmp/pbcopy.pipe | /usr/bin/pbcopy
done

which you can name pbcopy_server.sh, make executable (chmod a+x pbcopy_server.sh) and put somewhere in your path, so you can say nohup pbcopy_server.sh & when you first start your machine.

2. In any other terminal (including those in screen sessions) you can now cat files (or redirect output of programs into /tmp/pbcopy.pipe and the text will appear in the clipboard.

cat file > /tmp/pbcopy.pipe

df -h > /tmp/pbcopy.pipe

3. To make it look like you are calling the real pbcopy you can use something to do the cat'ing to /tmp/pbcopy.pipe for you.

3a. Use a zsh function:

function pbcopy() { cat > /tmp/pbcopy.pipe }

3b. Or create a Perl script named pbcopy and put it in a directory earlier in your PATH than /usr/bin:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

open my $out, ">", "/tmp/pbcopy.pipe"
   or die "could not open pipe to pbcopy: $!\n";

print $out $_ while <>;

Answer 2

There is a much easier solution to just use osascript as found at http://www.samsarin.com/blog/2008/10/18/copying-gnu-screen-buffer-to-leopard-clipboard/

In the comments, Andrew Wason provides this solution to copy the screen buffer:

Code in your .screenrc

# binds C-a b to copy the contents of your last screen copy to the MacOSX pasteboard
bind b eval "writebuf /tmp/screen-pbcopy" "exec /usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"' -e 'set the clipboard to (read posix file \"/tmp/screen-pbcopy\" as text)' -e 'end tell'"

Also using osascript, here's a bash script which emulates the behavior of pbcopy within screen. Improvements to this script are welcome:

Save this code as a bash script somewhere in your path, example: ~/bin/pbcopyScreen.bash

#!/bin/bash

# saves all standard input to a file
cat > /tmp/screen_pbcopy_kludge_buffer

# uses osascript to set the MacOSX pastebaord to the contents of the file
/usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application "System Events"' -e 'set the clipboard to (read posix file "/tmp/screen_pbcopy_kludge_buffer" as text)' -e 'end tell'

rm /tmp/screen_pbcopy_kludge_buffer

Answer 3

You may install an older version of Macport's screen which seems to solve this issue, as stated in comments of this article:
link to the last comment explaining how to do

I've tried myself and screen works very fine now with pbcopy ! :-)

Check that step:

1. Install Macport using its DMG file. Leopard's DMG

2. Launch a new Terminal and
   $ sudo vi /opt/local/etc/macports/sources.conf
   finally those 2 lines only remains in sources.conf, no more:

   file:///Users/xxxxx/ports
   rsync://rsync.macports.org/release/ports/ [default]

3. $ cd
$ mkdir -p ports/sysutils/ (do not create a "screen" directory, svn will)

4. $ cd ports/sysutils/
$ svn co -r 45745 http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/trunk/dports/sysutils/screen

5. Once check out:

   $ cd $HOME/ports
   $ portindex
   Creating software index in /Users/keugaerg/ports Adding port sysutils/screen

   Total number of ports parsed:   1 
   Ports successfully parsed:  1    
   Ports failed:           0
   

6. $ sudo port install screen (may take a while as downloading screen and buidling it)

Then it's done, just have to launch /opt/local/bin/screen .

Answer 4

This appears to be fixed in Snow Leopard's version of GNU Screen even though it keeps the same version number 4.00.03 (FAU) 23-Oct-06.

Alternatively you can update to Screen version 4.01:

git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/screen.git