On macOS you can read and write to the clipboard with pbcopy and pbpaste: $ ls | pbcopy $ pbpaste > out.txt You can also put this in a function in or

On macOS you can read and write to the clipboard with pbcopy and pbpaste: $ ls | pbcopy $ pbpaste > out.txt You can also put this in a function in order to get the path of the frontmost Finder window: osascript 2>/dev/null -e ' tell application "Finder" return POSIX path of (target of window 1 as alias) end tell' Get the current Finder selection: osascript 2>/dev/null -e ' set output to "" tell application "Finder" to set the_selection to selection set item_count to count the_selection repeat with item_index from 1 to count the_selection if item_index is less than item_count then set the_delimiter to "\n" if item_index is item_count then set the_delimiter to "" set output to output & ((item item_index of the_selection as alias)\'s POSIX path) & the_delimiter end repeat'