clipboard reading

[fiomba]

Hi all,
is it possible to read directly the content of Clipboard without to be obliged to
paste its content somewhere?
I only need it's text content, which can be read easily from memory (if you
know the starting address).
If the Clipboard is saved in a temporary file it is even easier...
Bye.

[burschik]

Yes, it's possible. In java, you could do the following, for example:

Clipboard clipboard = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard();
String contents = (String) clipboard.getContents(null).getTransferData(DataFlavor.stringFlavor);

The example assumes you have text in your clipboard, but that is not required.

[fiomba]

Hi burschik,
thank you for replying... but i 'll never use Java or C++ (I hate OOP).
Luckily in the meantime I found a solution using

xclip

I loaded it from Synaptic (I have Debian).
For those interested i give some examples:

Writing and reading clipboard:
cat TxtFile | xclip -i | xclip -o > FileOut
(which is almost the same as cat TxtFike > FileOut, but demonstrate
that you can read & write the Clipboard)

More interesting.... application to Google Translate:

filtering clipboard with bash
translate a word or a phrase w/ Google Translate + CtrlA (Select All) + CtrlC (Copy)
then... from the shell --> xclip -o | head -n 12 | tail -n 2

Wanting for example translate from Italian to english some chemical compounds, you obtain:

acetilcolina --> acetylcholine
cloruro di litio --> lithium chloride

Bye.