DEV Community

Matt Crowder
Matt Crowder

Posted on

4 1

I've been using cat and vim for the wrong reasons for so long...

My situation: I have a file that I need to copy the entire contents of it.

In the terminal, I type: cat file.txt, then copy the terminal output.

The easy solution:

pbcopy < file.txt

And now the contents are saved in my clipboard.

Then, if I had to paste those contents somewhere else, I would use vim to create a file and paste those contents in there, and if I was lucky, I wouldn't have to restart my computer from getting stuck in vim.

Instead, the easy solution:

pbpaste > file-two.txt

And now, all of the contents from my clipboard are saved in file-two.txt!

What other bash commands have you found useful? Let me know in the comments!

Top comments (6)

Collapse
 
acido_binario profile image
🍝 sadder sCrypt Kiddie 𖤐🕷️

For copying files:

cp fileToCopy.txt copyOfFile.txt
Collapse
 
audioboxer217 profile image
Scott Eppler

I use pbcopy all the time but was unaware of pbpaste (I've used the vim then paste method). So thanks for that!

For those offering suggestions on how to do a direct copy of one file to a new file. These are all great suggestions as well, but sometimes I'm copy to or pasting from something else.

Collapse
 
notaduck profile image
notaduck • Edited

An easy way to make a paste from the terminal instead of using paste in is to do;

cat <input> | nc termbin.com 9999
Collapse
 
cookrdan profile image
Dan

There are a few commands that copy files. So instead of doing a copy/paste routine you can do like this:

ditto file1.txt file2.txt

Also check out cp

Collapse
 
flrnd profile image
Florian Rand

Also, in case you are working in a remote machine

man scp

But I'm trying to figure out why do you need to copy it into the clipboard in the first place.

a simple cat file1.txt > file2.txt would do the job (or the examples already in comments), unless you are in a remote session (that's where scp comes handy :).

Collapse
 
edgarortegaramirez profile image
Edgar Ortega • Edited

you could also do

$ cat file1 > file2

Eliminate Context Switching and Maximize Productivity

Pieces.app

Pieces Copilot is your personalized workflow assistant, working alongside your favorite apps. Ask questions about entire repositories, generate contextualized code, save and reuse useful snippets, and streamline your development process.

Learn more

👋 Kindness is contagious

Please leave a ❤️ or a friendly comment on this post if you found it helpful!

Okay