How to capture the contents of the clipboard using the command line?

xenphor · 31 Aug 2013

There are lots of sites discussing how to redirect the output of the command line to the clipboard but nothing covering the opposite. I want to capture a link address I have copied to my clipboard and send it to a command line program, as a variable, in a script. Clip.exe seems to be the only command to deal with the clipboard but it only works the opposite way.

If comparing to Linux I'm looking for the command identical to "clipboard=$(xclip -out)"

Golden · 31 Aug 2013

See if this is of any help:
How to assign clipboard text to variable using clipget example? - General Help and Support - AutoIt Forums

MilesAhead · 31 Aug 2013

Also AutoHotkey has a built in clipboard variable named Clipboard.
To assign clipboard text contents to a variable
MyText := Clipboard

see Clipboard in the help. I recommend AutoHotkey_L variant as it has object/true array support.

xenphor · 31 Aug 2013

Hm I'll see what I can do, thanks, although I was hoping for a native solution :/

MilesAhead · 31 Aug 2013

xenphor said:

Hm I'll see what I can do, thanks, although I was hoping for a native solution :/

I suppose you could consider VBScript more "native" than AutoIt or AHK. :) There's probably a way to do it with VBS I would think. I just don't use it often. But I'm sure you can find sites with VBS code snippets.

edit: another alternative is PowerShell. But I use that even less. I'm not well versed in it.

xenphor · 31 Aug 2013

Unfortunately all I know how to do is combine a few command line programs together in a script.

MilesAhead · 03 Sep 2013

I would take a look on boards like softpedia.com and sourceforge.net for free command line clipboard stuff that's more versatile than the MS clip.exe. There's bound to be free ones around.