ccat

A minimal command-line tool that reads a file and copies its contents to the clipboard. Written in Zig.

Features

• Reads any file and copies its full contents to the system clipboard
• Cross-platform clipboard support:
  • macOS — pbcopy
  • Linux — wl-copy (Wayland) or xclip (X11)

Requirements

• Zig >= 0.15.2
• A supported clipboard tool on Linux (wl-copy or xclip)

Build

zig build

For an optimized release build:

zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast

The binary will be at zig-out/bin/ccat.

Usage

ccat <file_path>

Examples:

# Copy the contents of a file to the clipboard
ccat README.md

# Then paste it anywhere with Ctrl+V / Cmd+V

How It Works

1. Opens the specified file and reads its contents into memory.
2. Spawns the platform-appropriate clipboard command (pbcopy, wl-copy, or xclip).
3. Pipes the file contents to the clipboard command's stdin.
4. Prints Copied on success.