26

man xclip says:

 -selection     specify which X selection to use, options are 
                "primary" to use XA_PRIMARY (default), "secondary" 
                for XA_SECONDARY or "clipboard" for XA_CLIPBOARD

Why do we have 3 types of X-Selections? What are their purposes?

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
19

Historical, partly. I'm not sure "secondary" is used for anything at all anymore.

  • "clipboard" is what is used by most Ctrl+X/C/V; it is the clipboard you put things into on purpose.
  • "primary" is what holds whatever text is currently selected; it is how X keeps track of what is selected and conveniently may be pasted by middle clicking (or, if you're awesome, clicking right and left buttons at the same time) or by Shift+Insert in xterm.
Improve this answer
3
  • I'm not sure that secondary was ever really used... Commented Oct 22, 2010 at 20:34
  • Left and right clicking at the same time only works if your system is set up, so that left+right click simulates a middle-click, right? Commented Oct 28, 2010 at 18:04
  • Right. It's just my preferred configuration :) Commented Oct 29, 2010 at 20:51
12

Check here and here.

tl;dr: See Singpolyma's post.

Improve this answer
1
  • Great links! Thanks to the 1st one I finally understand why my clipboard is empty when I copy text to it in vim and then close vim. And 2nd explained how it is possible that I can copy-paste formatted text. Discussed implementation details and corner cases explained to me why X selection is so tricky. Commented May 24, 2019 at 10:24

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.