How do I select all text from a file with nano?

Question

I open a file in Ubuntu nano editor from the comand line and I want to copy all the contents of the file so I can paste it in an another application outside the shell.

So far I can only copy using shift on the screen that is visible but not on all content.

Answer 1

You can't use the buffer of nano to use it elsewhere, you need to use the buffer of X or Gnome.

xclip is the solution.

A command line interface to the X11 clipboard. It can also be used for copying files, as an alternative to sftp/scp, avoiding password prompts when X11 forwarding has already been setup.

Answer 2

Have you tried this:http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/xclip-linux-insert-files-command-output-intoclipboard/

It isn't within nano, but you could cat the file into xclip with: cat test.txt | xclip

Answer 3

From my understanding it is not possible to select an entire file in nano if it scrolls more then your window. If you are using a GUI and have nano open from a terminal and the file is not longer than your window you can use mouse and select all the text than cnt+shift+c will copy it to clipboard.

Although not in nano, there is a way in vim. See here.

Specifically, select text (visual mode) section.

Answer 4

There is a possible way:

cursor at the beginning of a file, and ctrl-6 to set a mark, then alt-shift-t (or try alt-t) to cut to the end of the file.

This work for me...