README.Rmd

---
output: github_document
---

<!-- README.md is generated from README.Rmd. Please edit that file -->

```{r, echo = FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>",
  fig.path = "README-"
)
```

clipr
=====

[![CRAN status.](https://www.r-pkg.org/badges/version/clipr)](https://www.r-pkg.org/pkg/clipr)
![Downloads, grand total](https://cranlogs.r-pkg.org/badges/grand-total/clipr)
[![R-CMD-check](https://github.com/mdlincoln/clipr/actions/workflows/R-CMD-check.yaml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/mdlincoln/clipr/actions/workflows/R-CMD-check.yaml)

Simple utility functions to read and write from the system clipboards of Windows, OS X, and Unix-like systems (which require either xclip or xsel.)

## Installation

Install from CRAN

```{r, eval = FALSE}
install.packages("clipr")
```

Or try the development version

```{r, eval = FALSE}
remotes::install_github("mdlincoln/clipr")
```

## Usage

clipr is pipe-friendly, and will default to returning the same object that was passed in.

```{r pipe-friendly}
library("clipr")

res <- write_clip(c("Text", "for", "clipboard"))
res

cb <- read_clip()
cb
```

To capture the string that clipr writes to the clipboard, specify `return_new = TRUE`. Character vectors with length > 1 will be collapsed with system-appropriate line breaks, unless otherwise specified

```{r return-new}

cb <- write_clip(c("Text", "for", "clipboard"), return_new = TRUE)
cb

cb <- write_clip(c("Text", "for", "clipboard"), breaks = ", ", return_new = TRUE)
cb
```

`write_clip` also tries to intelligently handle data.frames and matrices, rendering them with `write.table` so that they can be pasted into a spreadsheet like Excel.

```{r tbl}
tbl <- data.frame(a = c(1, 2, 3), b = c(4, 5, 6))
cb <- write_clip(tbl, return_new = TRUE)
cb
```

`read_clip_tbl` will try to parse clipboard contents from spreadsheets into data frames directly.

## Developing with clipr

See the "Developing with clipr" vignette included with this package for advisories on writing code that calls clipr functions.

## Nice uses of clipr

(a non-comprehensive list)

1. [reprex](https://github.com/tidyverse/reprex) by [\@jennybc](https://github.com/jennybc) takes R code on the clipboard and renders a reproducible example from it, ready to then paste on to GitHub, Stack Overflow, or the like.
2. [datapasta](https://github.com/milesmcbain/datapasta) by [\@milesmcbain](https://github.com/milesmcbain) eases the copying and pasting of R objects in and out of different sources (Excel, Google Sheets).

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[Matthew Lincoln](https://matthewlincoln.net)