pbpaste: Paste the OSX clipboard into a character vector

In drmjc/mjcbase: General helper functions for dealing with \R objects/data types

Description

Enhanced control over object type
The default is to read from clipboad into a character vector, and this will always work. You can attempt to convert this to other objects, like matrix or data.frame, if the clipboard contains suitable data (eg multi-line strings with tab's or comma's separating fields). We have tested this using vectors, 1 element per line; list, where each line becomes its own list element, matrix and data.frame, where each line is a row, each column is tab separated; also a Date class (see examples).

Usage

pbpaste(class = "character", sep = "\t", ok = TRUE, warn = TRUE,
  header = TRUE)

paste.from.clipboard(class = "character", sep = "\t")

Arguments

class	the class of the object to be created
sep	the separator to use if class="matrix", or class="data.frame"
ok	logical: is it OK to be missing a final EOL?
warn	logical: warn if the clipboard is missing a final EOL
header	logical: if class="data.frame" or class="matrix", then is the first line a header line?

Details

If you need finer control when importing to matrix or data.frame, we recommend you use read.table(..., file=pipe("pbpaste"), ...).

You can copy & paste actual representations of an R object complete with attributes & names etc using dput/dget. see examples.

Value

a data object from the clipboard, of type class.

Author(s)

Mark Cowley, 2011-07-22

See Also

readLines, pbcopy, the “Clipboard” section within ?file

Examples

## Not run: 
  pbcopy(letters)
  input <- pbpaste()
  input <- pbpaste("character")

  pbcopy(1:10)
  pbpaste()
  pbpaste("numeric")

  df <- data.frame(a=letters[1:5], b=LETTERS[1:5], c=1:5)
  pbcopy(df)
  input <- pbpaste("data.frame")
  input <- pbpaste("matrix")
  input <- pbpaste("list")
  input <- pbpaste("Date") # this should fail

 pbcopy(Sys.Date())
 # structure(15286, class = "Date")
 pbpaste() # the class parameter is ignored, since the clipboard already knows its class
 pbpaste("character") # the class parameter is ignored, since the clipboard already knows its class

# here's a way to copy the actual object represntation to & from the clipboad 
# (great for copying objects between R sessions)
dput(letters, pipe("pbpaste", "w"))
dget(pipe("pbcopy"))

# data.frame
if( require(datasets) ) {
  pbcopy(iris, col.names=TRUE)
  head(pbpaste("data.frame", header=T))
  #   Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species
  # 2          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2  setosa
  # 3          4.9           3          1.4         0.2  setosa
  # 4          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2  setosa
  # 5          4.6         3.1          1.5         0.2  setosa
  # 6            5         3.6          1.4         0.2  setosa
  # 7          5.4         3.9          1.7         0.4  setosa
  head(pbpaste("data.frame", header=F))
  #             V1          V2           V3          V4      V5
  # 1 Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species
  # 2          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2  setosa
  # 3          4.9           3          1.4         0.2  setosa
  # 4          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2  setosa
  # 5          4.6         3.1          1.5         0.2  setosa
  # 6            5         3.6          1.4         0.2  setosa
}


## End(Not run)

drmjc/mjcbase documentation built on May 15, 2019, 2:27 p.m.