
PBCOPY
NAME
pbcopy, pbpaste - provide copying and pasting to the pasteboard (the Clipboard) from command line SYNOPSIS
pbcopy [-help] [-pboard {general | ruler | find | font}] pbpaste [-help] [-pboard {general | ruler | find | font}] [-Prefer {ascii | rtf | ps}] DESCRIPTION
pbcopy takes the standard input and places it in the specified pasteboard. If no pasteboard is specified, the general pasteboard will be used by default. The input is placed in the pasteboard as ASCII data unless it begins with the Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) file header or the Rich Text Format (RTF) file header, in which case it is placed in the pasteboard as one of those data types. pbpaste removes the data from the pasteboard and writes it to the standard output. It normally looks first for ASCII data in the pasteboard and writes that to the standard output; if no ASCII data is in the pasteboard it looks for Encapsulated PostScript; if no EPS if present it looks for Rich Text. If none of those types is present in the pasteboard, pbpaste produces no output. OPTIONS
-pboard {general | ruler | find | font} specifies which pasteboard to copy to or paste from. If no pasteboard is given, the general pasteboard will be used by default. -Prefer {ascii | rtf | ps} tells pbpaste what type of data to look for in the pasteboard first. As stated above, pbpaste normally looks first for ASCII data; however, by specifying -Prefer ps you can tell pbpaste to look first for Encapsulated PostScript. If you specify -Prefer rtf, pbpaste looks first for Rich Text format. In any case, pbpaste looks for the other formats if the preferred one is not found. SEE ALSO
ADC Reference Library: Cocoa > Interapplication Communication > Copying and Pasting Carbon > Interapplication Communication > Pasteboard Manager Programming Guide Carbon > Interapplication Communication > Pasteboard Manager Reference BUGS
There is no way to tell pbpaste to get only a specified data type. Apple Computer, Inc. January 12, 2005 PBCOPY(1)