NAME

       clipboard - Manipulate Tk clipboard

SYNOPSIS

       clipboard option ?arg arg ...?
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DESCRIPTION

       This  command  provides  a Tcl interface to the Tk clipboard, which stores data for later retrieval using
       the selection mechanism (via the -selection CLIPBOARD option).  In order to copy data into the clipboard,
       clipboard clear must be called, followed by a sequence of one or more  calls  to  clipboard  append.   To
       ensure  that the clipboard is updated atomically, all appends should be completed before returning to the
       event loop.

       The first argument to clipboard determines the format of the rest of the arguments and  the  behavior  of
       the command.  The following forms are currently supported:

       clipboard clear ?-displayof window?
              Claims  ownership  of the clipboard on window's display and removes any previous contents.  Window
              defaults to ``.''.  Returns an empty string.

       clipboard append ?-displayof window? ?-format format? ?-type type? ?--? data
              Appends data  to  the  clipboard  on  window's  display  in  the  form  given  by  type  with  the
              representation given by format and claims ownership of the clipboard on window's display.

              Type  specifies  the  form  in  which  the selection is to be returned (the desired ``target'' for
              conversion, in ICCCM terminology), and should be an atom name such as STRING or FILE_NAME; see the
              Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual for complete details.  Type defaults to STRING.

              The format argument specifies the representation that should be used to transmit the selection  to
              the  requester  (the second column of Table 2 of the ICCCM), and defaults to STRING.  If format is
              STRING, the selection is transmitted as 8-bit ASCII characters.  If format is ATOM, then the  data
              is  divided  into  fields separated by white space; each field is converted to its atom value, and
              the 32-bit atom value is transmitted instead of the atom name.  For any  other  format,   data  is
              divided  into  fields separated by white space and each field is converted to a 32-bit integer; an
              array of integers is transmitted  to  the  selection  requester.   Note  that  strings  passed  to
              clipboard  append  are  concatenated  before  conversion,  so  the caller must take care to ensure
              appropriate spacing across string boundaries.  All items appended to the clipboard with  the  same
              type must have the same format.

              The  format argument is needed only for compatibility with clipboard requesters that don't use Tk.
              If the Tk toolkit is being used to retrieve the CLIPBOARD selection then the  value  is  converted
              back to a string at the requesting end, so format is irrelevant.

              A  -- argument may be specified to mark the end of options:  the next argument will always be used
              as data.  This feature may be convenient if, for example, data starts with a -.

       clipboard get ?-displayof window? ?-type type?
              Retrieve data from the clipboard on window's display.  window defaults to ".".  Type specifies the 2
              form in which the data is to be returned and should be an atom name such as STRING  or  FILE_NAME. 2
              Type defaults to STRING.  This command is equivalent to selection get -selection CLIPBOARD.

EXAMPLES

       Get the current contents of the clipboard.
              if {[catch {clipboard get} contents]} {
                  # There were no clipboard contents at all
              }

       Set the clipboard to contain a fixed string.
              clipboard clear
              clipboard append "some fixed string"

SEE ALSO

       selection(3tk)

KEYWORDS

       clear, format, clipboard, append, selection, type

Tk                                                     8.4                                        clipboard(3tk)