XSEL(1) BSD Reference Manual XSEL(1)
xsel - manipulate the X selection
xsel [-abcdfhiknopsVvx] [-l logfile] [-t timeout]
The X server maintains three selections, called PRIMARY, SECONDARY and
CLIPBOARD. Normally, the PRIMARY selection is only accessible by manually
highlighting information and pasting with the middle mouse button, the
SECONDARY selection is less frequently used by application programmes,
and the CLIPBOARD is only available to Copy/Cut/Paste commands of GUI ap-
plications. XSel is a command-line utility to manipulate the selections.
By default, XSel operates on the PRIMARY selection. It sets the selection
to data read from standard input, if standard output is a tty and stan-
dard input is not; otherwise, it prints the current content of the selec-
tion. If both input and output mode are selected, the previous content of
the selection is output, then the data read from standard input is stored
as the new content of the selection.
The options are as follows:
-a Append input to the selection instead of replacing it.
-b Operate on the CLIPBOARD selection.
-c Clear the selection.
-d Request that the selection be cleared and the application
owning it delete its contents.
-f Follow input and append it to the selection as it grows.
-h Display the usage and exit.
-i Store input into the selection.
-k Keep the currently set PRIMARY and SECONDARY selections in
persistent memory by taking them over, so they can be ac-
cessed even if the originating programme terminates. See
CAVEATS for details.
-l logfile Write errors to logfile when detached.
Default: ~/.etc/xsel.log
-n Do not detach from the controlling tty.
-o Output current content of the selection.
-p Operate on the PRIMARY selection (default).
-s Operate on the SECONDARY selection.
-t timeout Specify the timeout in milliseconds within which the selec-
tion must have been retrieved. A value of 0 (default) speci-
fies no timeout.
-V Display the version and exit.
-v Increase verbosity, print informative messages.
-x Exchange the contents of the PRIMARY and SECONDARY selections
with each other.
Similar to tail -f, follow a growing file and append to the selection:
$ xsel -f </var/log/messages
tail(1), Xserver(1), xset(1), xclipboard(1), xpaste(1), X(7)
http://www.vergenet.net/~conrad/software/xsel/
XSel conforms to the X Window System Inter-Client Communication Conven-
tions Manual Version 2.0 (ICCCM2), including correct handling of TARGETS,
MULTIPLE, TIMESTAMP, and DELETE targets, INCR properties and large data
transfers. The author's thoughts on ICCCM (Warning: explicit language)
are available at:
http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug-chat/2001/July/msg00054.html
XSel was written by Conrad Parker <conrad@vergenet.net>.
Sergey Kogan <kogan@sklad.bacon.ru> provided UTF-8 support.
The mdoc(7) format manpage was cobbled together by
Thorsten Glaser <tg@mirbsd.org>.
There is no X selection buffer. The selection mechanism in X11 is an in-
terclient communication mediated by the X server each time any program
wishes to know the selection contents, eg. to perform a middle mouse but-
ton paste. In order to implement modification of the selection(s) (in in-
put, keep and exchange modes) this utility detaches from the terminal,
spawning a child process to supply the new selection(s) on demand. This
daemon(3) process exits immediately when any other programme takes over
the selection(s), eg. when the user next selects some text in a terminal
window, or by running xsel -c.
MirOS BSD #10-current June 7, 2011 1
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