How to write to clipboard on Ubuntu/Linux in R?

Question

I'm running Ubuntu 11.10 and I would like to be able to write to the clipboard (or primary selection). The following gives an error ``` > x <- 1:10 > dput(x, 'clipboard') Error in file(file, "wt") : 'mode' for the clipboard must be 'r' on Unix ``` How can I write to the clipboard/primary selection? Note that I have seen this old R-Help post, but I'm still not clear what I should be doing. Linux does not have a clipboard but an X11 session has primary and secondary selections. ?file says Clipboard: ``` 'file' can also be used with 'description = "clipboard"' in mode '"r"' only. It reads the X11 primary selection, which can also be specified as '"X11_primary"' and the secondary selection as '"X11_secondary"'. When the clipboard is opened for reading, the contents are immediately copied to internal storage in the connection. Unix users wishing to _write_ to the primary selection may be able to do so via 'xclip' (), for example by 'pipe("xclip -…

Accepted Answer

Not sure if this is the best way, but here's how I could get it to work:

- Install xclip: `sudo apt-get install xclip`

- Read the manual: `man xclip`

- Write to X11 primary in R: `write.table(1:10, pipe("xclip -i", "w"))`

Update:

Note that the object passed to `write.table` will not be present in the clipboard until the pipe is closed. You can force the pipe to close by calling `gc()`. For example:

```
write.table(1:10, pipe("xclip -i", "w"))  # data may not be in clipboard
gc()                                      # data written to primary clipboard
```

A better way to manage the connection is to use a function with `on.exit(close(con))`, which will close the pipe even if the `write.table` call throws an error. Note that you need to ensure you're writing to the clipboard you intend to use (primary is the default), based on your system setup.

```
write.xclip <- function(x, selection=c("primary", "secondary", "clipboard"), ...) {
  if (!isTRUE(file.exists(Sys.which("xclip")[1L])))
    stop("Cannot find xclip")
  selection <- match.arg(selection)[1L]
  con <- pipe(paste0("xclip -i -selection ", selection), "w")
  on.exit(close(con))
  write.table(x, con, ...)
}
```

How to write to clipboard on Ubuntu/Linux in R?

Solution

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