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utils (version 3.6.2)

clipboard: Read/Write to/from the Clipboard in MS Windows

Description

Transfer text between a character vector and the Windows clipboard in MS Windows (only).

Usage

getClipboardFormats(numeric = FALSE)
readClipboard(format = 1, raw = FALSE)
writeClipboard(str, format = 1)

Arguments

numeric

logical: should the result be in human-readable form (the default) or raw numbers?

format

an integer giving the desired format.

raw

should the value be returned as a raw vector rather than as a character vector?

str

a character vector or a raw vector.

Value

For getClipboardFormats, a character or integer vector of available formats, in numeric order. If non human-readable character representation is known, the number is returned.

For readClipboard, a character vector by default, a raw vector if raw is TRUE, or NULL, if the format is unavailable.

For writeClipboard an invisible logical indicating success or failure.

Details

The Windows clipboard offers data in a number of formats: see e.g.https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/desktop/dataxchg/clipboard-formats.

The standard formats include

CF_TEXT 1 Text in the machine's locale
CF_BITMAP 2
CF_METAFILEPICT 3 Metafile picture
CF_SYLK 4 Symbolic link
CF_DIF 5 Data Interchange Format
CF_TIFF 6 Tagged-Image File Format
CF_OEMTEXT 7 Text in the OEM codepage
CF_DIB 8 Device-Independent Bitmap
CF_PALETTE 9
CF_PENDATA 10
CF_RIFF 11 Audio data
CF_WAVE 12 Audio data
CF_UNICODETEXT 13 Text in Unicode (UCS-2)
CF_ENHMETAFILE 14 Enhanced metafile
CF_HDROP 15 Drag-and-drop data
CF_LOCALE 16 Locale for the text on the clipboard
CF_MAX 17 Shell-oriented formats

Applications normally make data available in one or more of these and possibly additional private formats. Use raw = TRUE to read binary formats, raw = FALSE (the default) for text formats. The current codepage is used to convert text to Unicode text, and information on that is contained in the CF_LOCALE format. (Take care if you are running R in a different locale from Windows.)

The writeClipboard function will write a character vector as text or Unicode text with standard CR-LF line terminators. It will copy a raw vector directly to the clipboard without any changes.

See Also

file which can be used to set up a connection to a clipboard.