As developers, we often copy and paste to and fro the shell. So I thought I write a tiny tip that I learnt about a while back, yet not particularly specific to iOS app development. Normally you'd do something like this to copy the output of a command you ran in the shell:

do_something | pbcopy

Or to paste something:

pbpaste | do_something_else

If you define a small function in bash (e.g. you can put it in your ~/.profile):

function clip { [ -t 0 ] && pbpaste || pbcopy; }

then you can do this for copying:

do_something | clip

and pasting:

clip | do_something_else

If you use fish shell, you can define this in a file in ~/.config/fish/functions/:

function clip
    if not tty >/dev/null
        pbcopy
    else
        pbpaste
    end
end

PS: I'm not sure if tips such as this are of interest to you. If you can hit reply and let me know in a few words if you want more or less of this, it'll be much appreciated!

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