Mac — Replace clipboard text with regex in console

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Mac — Replace clipboard text with regex in console

I noticed today.

We can edit Mac's clipboad directly by pbcopy and pbpaste commands combination.

pbpaste | sed 's/Bob//g' | pbcopy

• pbpaste stdout text in clipboard
• sed get stdin, edit it and stdout
• pboaste get edited text from stdin

Example : Simple replace

echo "AliceBobCarol" | pbcopy && pbpaste | sed 's/Bob//g' | pbcopy && pbpaste
AliceCarol

Example : Regular expression

Use gsed command. Because mac default 'sed' command is too poor can not use regex.

$ brew install gnu-sed

$ echo "AliceAliceBobCarol" | pbcopy && pbpaste | gsed --regexp-extended 's/^(Alice)+//g' | pbcopy && pbpaste
BobCarol

Now

You got a new clipboard text and can paste to any place.

Be careful

When missed replace, clipboad text will be runexpected.(obvious thing)

If improve this method, I should change command. For example create temporary file, make that chained command to one command.

And recommend

Alfred's clipboad extension is very nice tool. You can keep clipboad history and paste them anytime.

Versions

• Mac OS X High Sierra

Links

• Qiita — Japanese
• Medium (just imported this gist)