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Comment by VMG | Hacker News Reader

Don't forget that it is one of two buffers, called PRIMARY for whatever reason (there is no secondary). If you select and press Ctrl-C, the content goes to CLIPBOARD. I can't count the number of times I've yelled expletives when I pasted the wrong buffer by mistake.

There should only be one clipboard.

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I have xclip installed (it copies/pastes from the X11 clipboard as a commandline utility), and having long had 'xc' and 'xp' shell scripts, finally added 'xpc' to paste from the 'CLIPBOARD' buffer after getting frustrated once too often that I wasn't able to do so.

I'll use these to "read in" files:

    xc < filename

And then in vim (faster than toggling paste mode):

    r ! xp

    r ! xpc  # for CLIPBOARD buffer

hm, why not just

    "+P

?

That doesn't seem to paste from the X11 primary clipboard buffer.

It's also a double pinky keystroke with a shift required (on QWERTY). Really awkward to type.

Try ':0r ! xp'

It does pretty much roll off your fingers.

It is not a buffer as such. Once the application holding the primary selection quits, you can't get the selected text, it doesn't exist anymore in any way. It doesn't get stored. In fact, you're just telling your application which content should it provide, when asked for the selection (not that it couldn't provide anything it likes).

Clipboard selection gets copied to a clipboard application and is accessible as long as you don't overwrite it (or even then, if you have more sophisticated clipboard app).

Funny, I really like having two clipboards and use the feature often.

There is only one clipboard. plus an additional text buffer.

As a multi system user with only one k/m input (windows/red hat), I love the differentiated buffer capability. It allows discrete usage of cntl x/c/v across systems and STILL allows me to manipulate c/p actions while multitasking.

There are lots of buffers in X, actually, it's just that only 2 are most commonly used. There're PRIMARY, SECONDARY and CLIPBOARD selections, and long-obsolete (but still accidentally used to implement cut/yank rings - a feature long forgotten by many) 8 cut buffers (CUT_BUFFER0 to CUT_BUFFER7).

Check yourself: http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/

You just taught me some weird new things about my computer. It tried what you said and, indeed, you are correct.

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