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How can i yank to/from windows clipboard when using:

  • Windows 7 (x64)
  • GNU Emacs 24.4.1 (x64)
  • Evil 1.0.9
  • and having (setq x-select-enable-clipboard nil) in my .emacs? (I put this line there because i didn't want vim changes (x, d, etc) to clobber my os clipboard.

I tried "+p, "*p, "+y, "*y, CTRL+Y but it doesn't work. When i run :registers it doesn't even show + or * registers.

To clarify: I want Emacs to behave like Vim when copying/yanking to/from different registers, without clobbering os clipboard with every text changing command. In particular:

  • yy - should NOT yank text to os clipboard (only to 0 register)
  • "+yy - should yank text to os clipboard
  • dd - should NOT clobber os clipboard
  • cw - shold NOT clobber os clipboard
  • etc.
Malabarba
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Kossak
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3 Answers3

5

I disabled the clipboard integration with:

(setq x-select-enable-clipboard nil)

Then you should still be able to copy and paste using the + register of evil. If you still want to integrate with the clipboard without evil, you could use this function to paste:

(defun paste-from-clipboard ()
  (interactive)
  (setq x-select-enable-clipboard t)
  (yank)
  (setq x-select-enable-clipboard nil))

and this one for copyping:

(defun copy-to-clipboard()
  (interactive)
  (setq x-select-enable-clipboard t)
  (kill-ring-save (region-beginning) (region-end))
  (setq x-select-enable-clipboard nil))

Then bind copy-to-clipboard to M-w and paste-from-clipboard to C-y, or other keybinding of your choice.

Edit: I'm running Archlinux. Can't say if this'll work on Windows.

Jesse
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  • Under Linux Mint the (setq x-select-enable-clipboard nil) is enough too because there are + and * registers to work with os clipboard, not under windows unfortunately. – Kossak Jun 26 '15 at 17:37
  • I tried your custom function (in windows) with evil plugin and (setq x-select-enable-clipboard nil): The yanking FROM os clipboard works as it should, but i can't yank the selection TO os clipboard (with bindings (define-key evil-normal-state-map (kbd "C-y") 'paste-from-clipboard) and (define-key evil-visual-state-map (kbd "C-y") 'paste-from-clipboard) – Kossak Jun 26 '15 at 17:39
  • I'm not sure if I get what you mean, paste-from-clipboard will only paste from clipboard. You'll need another function to copy to clipboard. I edited the question to added a copy-to-clipboard function. Please try if it works – Jesse Jun 26 '15 at 18:30
  • I wrongly thought the yank function copies to and from os clipboard (based on the presence of visual selection). Your other function does what i want, thank you. – Kossak Jun 27 '15 at 08:20
3

https://github.com/rolandwalker/simpleclip

it cover ALL the use cases on Mac/Linux/Windows/Cygwin.

More specifically, for copy&paste, there are only two commands:

simpleclip-get-contents
simpleclip-set-contents

Feel free to assign short keys.

chen bin
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  • This is wonderful, it simplifies interaction with the clipboard drastically. – loevborg Jan 03 '16 at 11:11
  • Agreed that this is a wonderful little tool, and still working beautifully in 2022 (updated as recently as 2020). – mncz May 13 '22 at 10:12
0

For people trying this on macOs, I used pbcopy.el. I realize this question was for Windows, but I spent a lot of time trying to get it to work on macOs, so sharing what I used.

To use your system’s clipboard on copy, cut and paste, install pbcopy

To install it, run

  1. M-x package-install
  2. Press the return key
  3. provide pbcopy.el as the package to install
  4. Press the return key
  5. inside your config file, add:
(require 'pbcopy)
(turn-on-pbcopy)
  1. restart emacs
Daniel Apt
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