Using the system clipboard (macOS)

Questions / Help
1

I have a simple .exs script that generates a string based on some inputs. How would I get that onto the system clipboard on macOS.

Here’s what I have so far:

  1. Gather input from the user via IO.gets/1
  2. Write the output to a file temp using File.write/3
  3. Run a bash script that outputs that temp file to pbcopy

This technically works but there must be a better way that I wouldn’t be ashamed of. Any help would be very much appreciated.

2

Hi,

  1. if it works it’s nothing you should be ashamed of
  2. can you pipe into pbcopy?
    Greez!
3

Hi, thanks for the response!

I first thought I could do something like $ elixir go.exs | pbcopy but that won’t work because it gets stuck waiting for user input.

4

you can use a Port https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Port.html

eg:

port = Port.open({:spawn, "pbcopy"}, [:binary])  
send port, {self(), {:command, "hello"}}
send port, {self(), :close}

will put hello in your clipboard

4 Likes
5

That worked perfectly. Thanks for help!

1 Like