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Shell function to create a menu of items which may be inserted into the X paste buffer.

Terminal - Shell function to create a menu of items which may be inserted into the X paste buffer.
smenu() ( IFS=',' ; select x in $*; do echo "$x" | xsel -i; done )
2010-02-08 15:33:53
User: bartonski
Functions: echo
2
Up
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Shell function to create a menu of items which may be inserted into the X paste buffer.

The function will take a comma separated list of items to be 'selected' by xsel -i:

smenu "First item to paste,Paste me #2,Third menu item"

You will then be prompted to choose one of the menu items. After you choose, you will be able to paste the string by clicking the middle mouse button.

The menu will keep prompting you to choose menu items until you break out with Control-C.

Show sample output | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

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What others think

You can override the default select prompt (#?) by setting the PS3 variable in the subshell. Also, you need a break in your select command if you want it to ever exit. Something like this:

smenu() ( IFS=',' ; PS3='Select an item to insert into the paste buffer: ' ; select x in $*; do echo "$x" | xsel -i ; break ; done )

Or, you could even have "Quit" be one of the selections:

smenu() ( IFS=',' ; PS3='Select an item to insert into the paste buffer: ' ; select x in $* Quit; do [ "$x" == "Quit" ] && break ; echo "$x" | xsel -i ; done )
Comment by eightmillion 29 weeks and 2 days ago

8M: For some reason, I never broke out of the select loop in your first version. I was expecting to enter a value, press enter, then exit the loop on the 'break' statement. It never exited.

The second version worked like a charm.

Comment by bartonski 29 weeks and 2 days ago

That's weird. What shell are you using? I didn't have any problems with bash, zsh, or ksh.

Comment by eightmillion 29 weeks and 2 days ago

bash version 3.1.17...

Hmmm. Tried it again. worked. Go figure.

Comment by bartonski 29 weeks and 2 days ago

Your point of view

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