Implementation status

[brunelli]

This is a list of xclip and xsel options, as per their man pages.

Lines marked with a ✔️ are already translated to wl-clipboard. The others are either not yet implemented in wl-clipboard/wl-clipboard-x11 (empty box) or unlikely to ever be supported (crossed out).

This list will be edited as new options are supported.

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XCLIP

• -i, -in
  read text into X selection from standard input or files (default)

• -o, -out
  print the selection to standard out (generally for piping to a file or program)

• -f, -filter
  when xclip is invoked in the in mode with output level set to silent (the defaults), the filter option will cause xclip to print the text piped to standard in back to standard out unmodified

• -r, -rmlastnl
  when the last character of the selection is a newline character, remove it. Newline characters that are not the last character in the selection are not affected. If the selection does not end with a newline character, this option has no effect. This option is useful for copying one-line output of programs like pwd to the clipboard to paste it again into the command prompt without executing the line immediately due to the newline character pwd appends.

• -l, -loops (will only loop once)
  number of X selection requests (pastes into X applications) to wait for before exiting, with a value of 0 (default) causing xclip to wait for an unlimited number of requests until another application (possibly another invocation of xclip) takes ownership of the selection

• -t, -target (TARGETS not implemented)
  specify a particular data format using the given target atom. With -o the special target atom name "TARGETS" can be used to get a list of valid target atoms for this selection. For more information about target atoms refer to ICCCM section 2.6.2

• -d, -display
  X display to use (e.g. "localhost:0"), xclip defaults to the value in $DISPLAY if this option is omitted

• -h, -help
  show quick summary of options

• -selection
  specify which X selection to use, options are "primary" to use XA_PRIMARY (default), "secondary" for XA_SECONDARY or "clipboard" for XA_CLIPBOARD

• -version
  show version information

• -silent
  fork into the background to wait for requests, no informational output, errors only (default)

• -quiet show informational messages on the terminal and run in the foreground

• -verbose
  provide a running commentary of what xclip is doing

• -noutf8
  operate in legacy (i.e. non UTF-8) mode for backwards compatibility (Use this option only when really necessary, as the old behavior was broken)

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XSEL

Input options

• -a, --append
  append standard input to the selection. Implies -i.

• -f, --follow
  append to selection as standard input grows. Implies -i.

• -i, --input
  read standard input into the selection.

Output options

• -o, --output
  write the selection to standard output.

Action options

• -c, --clear
  clear the selection. Overrides all input options.

• -d, --delete (currently working the same as --clear)
  Request that the current selection be deleted. This not only clears the selection, but also requests to the program in which the selection resides that the selected contents be deleted. Overrides all input options.

Selection options

• -p, --primary
  operate on the PRIMARY selection (default).

• -s, --secondary
  operate on the SECONDARY selection.

• -b, --clipboard
  operate on the CLIPBOARD selection.

• -k, --keep
  Do not modify the selections, but make the PRIMARY and SECONDARY selections persist even after the programs they were selected in exit. (Conventionally, the CLIPBOARD selection is persisted by a separate special purpose program such as xclipboard(1)). Ignores all input and output options.

• -x, --exchange
  exchange the PRIMARY and SECONDARY selections. Ignores all input and output options.

X options

• --display displayname
  specify the server to use; see X(1).

• -t ms, --selectionTimeout ms (using timeout wl-{copy,paste})
  Specify the timeout in milliseconds within which the selection must be retrieved. In --input mode, the background process exits after this amount of time. A value of 0 (zero) specifies no timeout (default).

Miscellaneous options

• -l filename, --logfile filename
  Specify the file to log errors to when detached. (Default $HOME/.xsel.log)

• -n, --nodetach
  Do not detach from the controlling terminal. Without this option, xsel will fork to become a background process in input, exchange and keep modes.

• -h, --help
  display usage information and exit

• -v, --verbose
  Print informative messages. Additional instances of -v raise the debugging level, ie. print more information.

• --version
  output version information and exit