Paste buffers

TUIOS keeps your recent yanks as paste buffers, as tmux does. A yank in copy mode adds a buffer. A mouse selection that you copy also adds a buffer. The yank also goes to the clipboard, as before.

Paste a buffer

Ctrl+B ] takes the newest of your own buffers: text that you copied, or set yourself. A buffer from a program in a pane without admin is never your newest. So no such program can set what the key pastes.

The paste goes to the pane that had the focus when you pressed the key. This is also true when the focus moves before the text arrives.

The buffer list

Ctrl+B # shows the buffers, newest first. Each row shows the name, the text and the size of a buffer.

A buffer that a program in a pane set shows "from pane" and the name of that pane. You did not copy that text, so read it before you paste it.

How a paste arrives

• Each line feed becomes a carriage return, as in tmux.
• TUIOS removes control characters other than tab, line feed and carriage return. So a buffer cannot end a bracketed paste early.
• The text goes in the bracketed paste marks when the program in the pane turned them on, as a clipboard paste does.

Use the tmux keys

tmux shows the list on =. In TUIOS, Ctrl+B = makes the splits equal. So the list is on #, the tmux key for list-buffers. To use the tmux keys, move the splits key and give = to the list:

[keybindings.prefix_mode]
prefix_equalize_splits = ["E"]
choose_buffer = ["="]

Where the buffers are

The daemon keeps the buffers. Every client and every session on the machine shares them. A client with no daemon keeps its own. The buffers are in memory only. They go when the daemon stops.

The rules are the tmux rules:

• A yank makes a buffer that TUIOS names buffer0, buffer1 and so on.
• limit counts only these buffers. Past limit, the oldest of them goes.
• A buffer that you name with set-buffer -b stays until you delete it, or until the buffers pass max_kb.
• Past max_kb, the oldest unnamed buffer goes first, then the oldest named one.
• A yank larger than max_kb does not become a buffer. It still goes to the clipboard.

[paste_buffers]
limit = 20     # how many unnamed buffers to keep. 0 keeps none.
max_kb = 16384 # most KiB all buffers hold together, at most 262144. 0 uses 16384.

With limit = 0, a yank goes only to the clipboard. The daemon reads the settings when it starts and when the file changes. A smaller limit removes the oldest buffers at once. See The paste_buffers table.

From the command line

The commands list-buffers, show-buffer, set-buffer, delete-buffer and paste-buffer read and change the same buffers. See Paste buffers in the CLI reference.

# What can be pasted again
tuios list-buffers

# Keep a command, and paste it into the ops pane later
tuios set-buffer -b deploy 'kubectl rollout restart deploy/api'
tuios paste-buffer -b deploy -w ops

# Store the output of a command
git log -1 --format=%H | tuios set-buffer

Under the tmux shim, tmux paste-buffer and the other buffer commands use the same buffers. So tmux paste-buffer pastes your last yank.

Who owns a buffer

A buffer is yours or one pane's.

• Your yanks are yours.
• What you set from outside every pane, or from a pane that holds admin, is yours.
• What a pane without admin sets is that pane's own.

A buffer can hold a secret that you copied. So a pane without admin sees and pastes only its own buffers. It does not see your buffers or the buffers of another pane, in its session or in a different session. It cannot change or replace a buffer that you set. It cannot make a named buffer, so a name that you keep a command under stays yours.

From inside a pane, reading the buffers needs the read grant. Changing them needs write. Pasting needs both. See What a pane may do.

Large requests to the daemon take memory from a budget. A big set-buffer, a stash put and an image paste are such requests. You have a budget of your own, outside every pane or in a pane that holds admin. A pane without admin shares a different budget, so it cannot use up yours.

Related