Question

For example, if a python script will spit out a string giving the path of a newly written file that I’m going to edit immediately after running the script, it would be very nice to have it directly sent to the system clipboard rather than STDOUT.

Answer 1

You can use an external program, xsel:

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
p = Popen(['xsel','-pi'], stdin=PIPE)
p.communicate(input='Hello, World')

With xsel, you can set the clipboard you want to work on.

• -p works with the PRIMARY selection. That’s the middle click one.
• -s works with the SECONDARY selection. I don’t know if this is used anymore.
• -b works with the CLIPBOARD selection. That’s your Ctrl + V one.

Read more about X’s clipboards here and here.

A quick and dirty function I created to handle this:

def paste(str, p=True, c=True):
    from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

    if p:
        p = Popen(['xsel', '-pi'], stdin=PIPE)
        p.communicate(input=str)
    if c:
        p = Popen(['xsel', '-bi'], stdin=PIPE)
        p.communicate(input=str)

paste('Hello', False)    # pastes to CLIPBOARD only
paste('Hello', c=False)  # pastes to PRIMARY only
paste('Hello')           # pastes to both

---

You can also try pyGTK’s clipboard :

import pygtk
pygtk.require('2.0')
import gtk

clipboard = gtk.clipboard_get()

clipboard.set_text('Hello, World')
clipboard.store()

This works with the Ctrl + V selection for me.