How to "copy to clipboard" in vim of Bash on Windows?

bash vim windows-subsystem-for-linux
nbystndr picture nbystndr · Jun 11, 2017 · Viewed 13.2k times · Source

I used to use "+y to copy text to system's clipboard, but it doesn't work in vim of Bash on Windows.

Answer

davidanderle picture davidanderle · Oct 29, 2017

Since neither "*y nor "+y (...) work, an alternative is the following:

Add this to your .vimrc and create a file called ~/.vimbuffer

" copy (write) highlighted text to .vimbuffer
vmap <C-c> y:new ~/.vimbuffer<CR>VGp:x<CR> \| :!cat ~/.vimbuffer \| clip.exe <CR><CR>
" paste from buffer
map <C-v> :r ~/.vimbuffer<CR>

Higlight any text using visual or visual-block and press ctrl-c. Paste copied text outside your terminal using the usual method or paste copied text to any vim pane using ctrl-v in normal or visual mode.

Ctrl-c yanks the selected text, overwrites ~/.vimbuffer with the selected text, runs a UNIX command to pipe out the data from ~/.vimbuffer to clip.exe.

Any further improvement (e.g.: making command silent) is much appreciated!

Edit: command can now copy strings with any length, not just whole lines. Old command:

vmap <C-c> :w! ~/.vimbuffer \| !cat ~/.vimbuffer \| clip.exe <CR><CR>

Related questions

Reload .Xresources without restarting the xterm

To use ALT key in vim without tweaking, the escaping should be disabled in xterm. Without escaping the ALT will not work in bash for shortcuts. to work around I need to reload this option before starting vim: XTerm*metaSendsEscape: …

Read More
How to highlight Bash scripts in Vim?

My Vim editor auto highlights PHP files (vim file.php), HTML files (vim file.html) and so on. But when I type: vim file and inside it write a Bash script, it doesn't highlight it. How can I tell Vim …

Read More
VIM: how to go to exact line on Ubuntu

I'm using vi on Ubuntu 12.10. Some files are quite long so when I want to go to the middle of the file, I have to page down or scroll down. Is there a VIM shortcut to go to an exact …

Read More