How to copy/cut a file (not the contents) to the clipboard in Windows on the command line?

Question

Is there a way to copy (or cut) a file to the Windows clipboard from the command line?

In particular with a batch script. I know how to copy the contents to the clipboard (type file | clip), but this is not the case. I want to have the whole file as I would press Ctrl + C in Windows Explorer.

Answer 1

OK, it seems the easiest way was to create a small C# tool that takes arguments and stores them in the clipboard:

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Collections.Specialized;

namespace File2Clip
{
    public class App
    {
        [STAThread]
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            List<string> list = new List<string>();

            string line;
            while(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(line = Console.ReadLine())) list.Add(line);
            foreach (string s in args) list.Add(s);

            StringCollection paths = new StringCollection();
            foreach (string s in list) {
            Console.Write(s);
                paths.Add( 
                    System.IO.Path.IsPathRooted(s) ? 
                      s : 
                      System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory() + 
                        @"\" + s);
            }
            Clipboard.SetFileDropList(paths);
        }
    }
}

2017 edit: Here's a github repo with both source and binary.