OS X Command Line Utilities

Re:OS X Command Line Utilities by kbd on Sunday August 30, 2015 @05:47PM (#10144586)

> function clip { [ -t 0 ] && pbpaste || pbcopy }

That's great! Would you please explain why that works? Are there any cases you know of where that doesn't work as expected?

Edit: btw you need a semicolon after pbcopy to make that function valid on one line.

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Re:OS X Command Line Utilities by godDLL on Sunday August 30, 2015 @05:54PM (#10144601)

I'm not the OP, but I'll give it a go.

`[` is a Bash built-in command also known as `test`. The `-t` parameter tells it to test if a file descriptor is open for `0`, which is also known as `STDIN`.

So if you're piping something into `STDIN` it will do `pbcopy`. If not -- it will do `pbpaste`.

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Re:OS X Command Line Utilities by djeikyb on Sunday August 30, 2015 @05:57PM (#10144612)

from `man test`:

   -t FD  file descriptor FD is opened on a terminal

FD 0 is stdin I'd guess. Pretty clever!

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