Copy multi-line strings to the clipboard on windows

[adams3624564]

I've been using the following to copy text to the clipboard, but it doesn't handle the new-line character ('\n').  I've tried different combinations of escape characters but haven't found anything that works.

if (isWindows()) {
    cmd = 'cmd.exe /c cmd.exe /c "echo ' + content + '| clip"';
}
system.callSystem(cmd);

[Mylenium]

Honestly, I don't think this will ever work. You probably need some weird regex ur sub-command loop in your command line string to encapsulate all characters to convert back and forth. The command line itself is essentially not designed to handle multiline text. It would probably more efficient to write your data to a file and retrieve it from there.

Mylenium

[adams3624564]

I need the data to end up in the clipboard, but your suggestion to save to a file is good.  I can probably pipe the contents of the file to the clipboard.

[adams3624564 · Accepted solution]

Thanks everyone for the good ideas!  I ended up going with Mylenium's temp file suggestion, but I'm sure the other solutions would just as well.  Here is my finished code - all this for simply copying text to the clipboard geez:

        if (isWindows()) {
            var tempPath = Folder.temp.toString() + "\\cbtemp.txt";
            var tempFile = new File(tempPath);
            tempFile.encoding = "UTF8";
            tempFile.open("w");
            if (tempFile.error != "")
                return errTxt + tempFile.error;
            tempFile.write(content);
            if (tempFile.error != "")
                return errTxt + tempFile.error;
            tempFile.close();
            cmd = 'cmd.exe /c cmd.exe /c "type ' + tempFile.fsName + '| clip"';
        }

[Adirai Maji]

You can try utilize powershell for this,

var content = "Let say this is your content with spaces and  \n new line goes here \n and another line goes here";

//Check your content.
alert(content);


//Replace all the spaces in your content to the format Powershell Can Understand.
content = content.replace(/ /g,"$([char]0x0020)");

//Replace all the new lines in your content to the format Powershell Can Understand.
content = content.replace(/\n/g,"$([char]0x000a)");

	var isWindows = $.os.indexOf('Windows') !== -1;
    
	if (isWindows) {
        var cmd = 'cmd.exe /c powershell.exe Set-Clipboard '+'"'+content+'"';
	}
	system.callSystem(cmd);

Hope this will help.

[adams3624564]

Thanks!  This seems like a good solution.  I ended up going with the temp file solution but I'm going to keep this in mind for furture projects.

[Guest]

There is a way, but I wouldn't really recommend it:

you can replace "\n" in your string with "& echo.", then put parantheses around everything up to the pipe.

So if you want to output "hello\nworld", you would not do it like this:

cmd.exe /c "echo hello\nworld|clip"

But rather like this:

cmd.exe /c "(echo hello& echo.world)|clip"

But probably piping into a file is a better approach.

[adams3624564]

Thanks!  I'd seen examples of this arounnd the internet but didn't understand it until you explained it.  This is interesting.  I wish I knew more about the windows command line.  I'm going to keep this in mind for future projects.