Copy string to clipboard in c

Question

First of all, I know there is a question with an identical name, however it deals with c++ and not c.

Is there any way to set a string to the clipboard in c?

This is the mentioned question if anyone is curious, even though it is for windows.

I need it to be in c because I am writing a program in c, and I would like to copy a string to the clipboard.

printf("Welcome! Please enter a sentence to begin.\n> ");
fgets(sentence, ARR_MAX, stdin);   
//scan in sentence
int i;
char command[ARR_MAX + 25] = {0};
strncat(command, "echo '",6);
strncat(command, sentence, strlen(sentence));
strncat(command, "' | pbcopy",11);
command[ARR_MAX + 24] = '\0';
i = system(command); // Executes echo 'string' | pbcopy

The above code is saving 2 new lines in addition to the string. ARR_MAX is 300.

Answer 1

you tagged your question for osx. so this should be sufficient: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/PasteboardGuide106/Articles/pbCopying.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008102-SW1

however there is the problem of having to call non-native c. Whether this is directly possible I don`t know.

if you can accept some hacky behavior you could invoke the pbcopy command.

http://osxdaily.com/2007/03/05/manipulating-the-clipboard-from-the-command-line/

this would be very easy to implement. here is a short function which should copy to clipboard. But I dont have osx handy so cannot test myself

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

int copytoclipboard(const char *str) {

    const char proto_cmd[] = "echo '%s' | pbcopy";

    char cmd[strlen(str) + strlen(proto_cmd) - 1]; // -2 to remove the length of %s in proto cmd and + 1 for null terminator = -1
    sprintf(cmd ,proto_cmd, str);

    return system(cmd);
}

int main()
{
    copytoclipboard("copy this to clipboard");

    exit(0);
}