Powershell: Copy & paste is not working properly on Windows 10

[loxal]

I need to right click to paste which everything but aligned with everything else. On Mac's terminal you can just "Cmd + V" everywhere.

[mklement0]

Good find.

It looks like a PSReadLine issue.

You can verify this by running Remove-Module PSReadLine in your session (which is obviously not a real solution, as it disables all PSReadLine features), at which point the W10 console windows' native selection and copy & paste features start working.

I suggest posting an issue there - correct, @iSazonov?

[iSazonov]

Could you please test on Linux too?

[mklement0]

@iSazonov:

Linux terminals typically use ⌃⇧C and ⌃⇧V rather than ⌃C and ⌃V.

I can confirm that ⌃⇧C and ⌃⇧V work as expected in the default terminal on Ubuntu 16.04.

[iSazonov]

@mklement0 Thanks for the test!

[loxal]

After executing Remove-Module PSReadLine Ctrl + V works fine again on Windows 10 (Creators Update)/PS6beta4.

[iSazonov]

@lzybkr Could you please comment the Issue?

[loxal]

Another, slightly unrelated question:

When I launch "Ubuntu Bash" in PS and want to use Ctrl + V as well, I get ^V -- only right-click works. With https://conemu.github.io/ it works fine but I do not want to use it because if its preferences bloat.

[mklement0]

@loxal: I don't think that's a PowerShell problem; bash.exe is in control of keyboard handling, and you get the same (broken) behavior whether you invoke it from PowerShell or directly, via the official shortcut.

[lzybkr]

PSReadline depends on winforms for clipboard support, but winforms is not in .Net Core. We likely need to extract the clipboard p/invoke code from winforms to get copy/paste support in PSReadline, but that still won't help on non-Windows platforms that might not support a clipboard at all.

[iSazonov]

If it work without PSReadline why we need the clipboard p/invoke ?

[lzybkr]

Cooked mode command line editing (conhost) supports basic selection and clipboard, but isn't extensible, so PSReadline uses raw mode and loses some things like clipboard support.

[iSazonov]

Is there no way to passthrough for clipboard support?

[lzybkr]

Not really, there could be some horrible hack, but no clean way.

[iSazonov]

@lzybkr Thanks for clarify!

Unix doesn't seem to have a common clipboard 😕. I guess we have to fix at least Windows.

[iSazonov]

Native API:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms649048%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms649016(v=vs.85).aspx#_win32_Copying_Information_to_the_Clipboard

WinForms uses ComObj OleGetClipboard https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#System.Windows.Forms/winforms/Managed/System/WinForms/Clipboard.cs,f4f3734655d33a95

[aarsan]

Any movement on this? Would love to be able to get my ctrl + v back :)

[MaximoTrinidad]

+1 with @aarsan

This works in Windows PowerShell without doing "remove-module psreadline", but not in PSCore 6.0.0.
In PSCore 6.0.0, only works if I do the "remove-module psreadline".

:)

[lzybkr]

Run Install-Module PSReadLine -AllowPrerelease -AllowClobber -Force and restart, you'll have 2.0.0-beta1 which fixes most of the issues people have had.

[aarsan]

Awesome. Worked, but I had to add the -SkipPublisherCheck argument. Thanks!

[iSazonov]

I think we can close the Issue - with PSReadline 2.0.0 we got Ctrl-V and Ctrl-C on Windows back.

[Hrxn]

In which version of PowerShell Core will PSReadline 2.0.0 land?

[lzybkr]

@Hrxn - hopefully 6.1

[yves-dolce]

Any progress on this? Still not working with 6.0.2 / PSReadLine 1.2

[lzybkr]

You can install PSReadLine 2.0.0-beta1. Beta2 will hopefully ship with the next preview of 6.1.

[mklement0]

@lzybkr:

Thanks for fixing most of the issues in v2, on all platforms.

The one thing that still doesn't seem to work on _Unix_ platforms is copying _keyboard-based_ selections to the clipboard.

What would be required to support that?

[lzybkr]

@mklement0 - I haven't really looked into clipboard support for non-WIndows - I'd sort of assumed the only viable approach was to use an external utility like pbcopy or xclip or whatever the tool might be called.

[mklement0]

@lzybkr:

Indeed: on macOS it is pbcopy, on freedesktop.org-compliant Linux distros (X11-based desktops) it is the xclip utility, which, unfortunately, isn't preinstalled.

My ClipboardText module provides a PS wrapper around these (including around clip.exe on Windows), if it helps. (It only _warns_ about a missing xclip and provides installation _hints_, however).