Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide

Name

pbpaste — stdin  stdout  - file  -- opt  --help  --version

Synopsis

pbpaste [options]

pbpaste is the companion to pbcopy: it copies the contents of the Macintosh clipboard to standard output. For example, to count the number of words in a TextEdit document, copy the document’s text to the clipboard and then run:

➜ pbpaste | wc -w
94821

Run without any arguments, pbpaste simply prints the clipboard contents on standard output (onscreen). To copy the contents to a text file, run:

➜ pbpaste > outfile.txt

If you’re bored, try this useless pipe command:

➜ pbpaste | pbcopy

which copies the clipboard back into itself. As with pbcopy, to get the most out of pbpaste, you should be using the desktop and Terminal, not logged in from a remote system via SSH.