kp

kp works with the copy-paste buffer. It's essentially a clone of xsel that I've tweaked to satisfy several personal use cases. I use it as a bridge between my command-line working environment and UI apps (mostly, the browser).

To install:

$ go install github.com/mpenkov/tools/kp@latest

and ensure that $GOPATH/bin (by default, $HOME/go) is in your $PATH, e.g.:

$ export GOPATH=$HOME/go
$ export PATH=$GOPATH/bin:$PATH

Finally:

$ kp help
kp works with the copy-paste buffer.

Usage:

        kp <command>

The commands are:

        copy    Read standard input, write to the copy-paste buffer
        edit    Edit the contents of the copy-paste buffer using $EDITOR
        paste   Write the contents of the copy-paste buffer to standard output
        tmux    Write the contents of the current tmux pane to the copy-paste buffer

copy

read stuff into the buffer (copy):

$ cat file.txt | grep foo | kp
$ cat file.txt | grep foo | kp copy -  # more verbose version of the above
$ kp copy file.txt

paste

write the contents of the buffer to stdout (like a paste):

$ kp paste  # in case C-S-v, C-S-Insert and friends refuse to work for some reason.

I frequently use kp paste from within vim, because that pastes the content as-is, without vim messing up the indentation. I find this to be a quicker alternative then entering vim's paste mode, pasting, and then exiting the paste mode.

edit

Often, I'll paste stuff into a UI application only to have to edit what I just pasted. This is slow, so instead I first edit the contents of the buffer (using $EDITOR):

$ kp edit

tmux

write the contents of the current tmux pane to the buffer, and then edit the buffer (using $EDITOR):

$ kp tmux

This allows you to easily share snippets of output from your console with others. I find this to be much quicker than using tmux's copy-mode-vi (or copy-mode depending on the local tmux config). kp tmux instantly puts the whole pane into vim, and from there I can edit at the speed of thought.