RE: Copy converts tabs to spaces ?

["Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E]" <BBuchbinder at niaid dot nih dot gov>]

Ralf Gans wrote on Monday, February 02, 2009 8:57 AM:
> On 02.02.2009, at 11:05, xerces8 wrote:
>> I noticed that when copying text from a the Cygwin Bash window and
>> then pasting it somewhere (like WordPad), tabulator characters are
>> converted to spaces.
>>
>> The same happens with RXVT too.
>>
>> Details:
>> - print the content of some text file that has tabs (like a C
>> program source) : cat foo.c
>> - select and copy the text with the mouse
>> - paste (ctrl-V) into WordPad
>>
>> The text in Wordpad has no more tabs.
>>
>> Is there a way around this ?
>
> copy an paste from window to window takes what's printed, not what
> you have written.
>
> So, if the terminal prints spaces to represent the tabs, as a
> terminal usually does, you CAN only copy spaces.
>
> All else is an exception, U*X ist NOT wysiwyg!

Think about using putclip instead.

  $ cat foo.c | putclip -d
  $ putclip -d < foo.c
  $ putclip --help
  putclip version 0.2.0
    Copy stdin to the Windows Clipboard

  Usage: putclip [OPTION...]

  General options
    -d, --dos         Clipboard text will have DOS line endings.
    -u, --unix        Clipboard text will have UNIX line endings.
    -n, --no-conv     Do not translate line endings.

  Help options
    -?, --help        Show this help message
    --usage           Display brief usage message
    --version         Display version information
    --license         Display licensing information
  NOTE: by default, no line ending conversion is performed.

You also might want to familiarize yourself with getclip.

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