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.

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.

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.

Note

This is only available on Windows.

See Also

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