XSel

Advanced features

XSel also lets you access some of the more esoteric features of the X selection:

• Delete the contents of the selection

  xsel --delete

  Will cause the program in which text is selected to delete that text. This really works, you can try it on xedit to remotely delete text in the editor window.

• Manipulate the secondary selection

  The X Window System maintains two selections, the usual primary selection and a secondary, which isn't used much ... XSel lets you use the secondary selection, for example:

  To get and set the secondary selection:

  xsel --secondary < file
  xsel --secondary > file

  To swap the primary and secondary selections:

  xsel --exchange

  So for example you can store useful text in the secondary selection and retrieve it later.

• Manipulate the clipboard selection

  Similarly, X has a clipboard selection. You can use the standard xclipboard program to manage a history of selected text, and you can use xsel to actually get text into that clipboard:

  xsel --clipboard < file

• Make the selection contents persist in memory

  Normally the X selection only exists as long as the program it was selected in is running. Further, some buggy applications tend to forget their selection text after a little while. If you run:

  xsel --keep

  after selecting some important text, xsel will copy the text into its own memory so you can paste it elsewhere even if the original program exits or crashes.

X11 ICCCM2

License

Copyright (C) 2001 Conrad Parker <conrad@vergenet.net>

Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

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