OS independent clipboard copy/paste text in C

Question

I'm working on a project that's supposed to work on both Windows and Linux (with an unofficial Mac port as well) that emulates a true colour system console.

My problem is that recently there appeared a request for textfield support (yes, console-based) and it would be cool to add the possibility of copying text to clipboard and pasting from it. Is there a way of achieving this that will:

• be done in C (not C++),
• work in both Windows and in Linux (preprocessor macros are an option if there's no platform-independent code),
• require no extra libraries to link to?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

If you're not using a cross platform UI library (like wx or something), then it sounds like you're just going to have to write native clipboard code for each platform you want to support.

Remember, on Macintoshes, you copy with Command-C, not Ctrl+C :)

Answer 2

The clipboard is inherently an operating system defined concept. The C language itself has no knowledge of what a clipboard is or how to operate on it. You must either interface directly with the OS, or use a portability library that does this on your behalf. There is no way around this.