Copy To Clipboard Highlighted Text From Text Widget

[Wildman]

On Tue, 22 Mar 2016 02:01:53 +0000, MRAB wrote:

> On 2016-03-22 01:47, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 12:24 PM, Wildman via Python-list
>> <python-list at python.org> wrote:
>>> I have a gui that has text widget and I want to be able to
>>> copy to the clipboard the text that is highlighted or the
>>> text widget's entire contents if no text is highlighted.
>>
>> Fortunately your code reveals that you're using "tk" here, but
>> otherwise, please state up-front which GUI library you're using; there
>> are quite a few.
>>
>>> This line of code works for the highlighted text:
>>>
>>>     text2copy = self.text.get(tk.SEL_FIRST, tk.SEL_LAST)
>>>
>>> However, this code will generate an exception if no text
>>> is highlighted.  So here is what I come up with and it
>>> works:
>>>
>>> def copy_clipboard(self):
>>>     try:
>>>         text2copy = self.text.get(tk.SEL_FIRST, tk.SEL_LAST)
>>>     except:
>>>         text2copy = self.text.get()
>>>     root.clipboard_clear()
>>>     root.clipboard_append(text2copy)
>>>
>>> My concern is whether or not this approach is acceptable.
>>> Is it ok to let the exception occur or would it be better
>>> to avoid it?  If the later, I would appreciate suggestions
>>> on how to do that, I mean how to determine if any text is
>>> highlighted without generating an exception.  My research
>>> was not very fruitful.
>>
>> You're trying to do one of two things:
>>
>> 1) Copy the selected text to the clipboard
>> 2) If there isn't any, copy all the text.
>>
>> So I would say yes, the basic layout of try/except to get the text is
>> perfect. However, DON'T use a bare "except:" clause. You'll get back a
>> specific exception; catch that instead. Other than that, sure, your
>> code looks fine.
>>
> It'll raise TclError.

Thanks, that saved me some research time.

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<Wildman> GNU/Linux user #557453
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