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In XCode there's a text key binding ^Y to the "yank" command.

What does "yank" mean? I thought it was to "yank back deleted text" but so far it only "yanks back" text I cut, which means its synonymous with "paste" on windows?

Tamara Wijsman
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bobobobo
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2 Answers2

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Yes, yanking and pasting are different terms for the same thing. I first learned about it through pico, and it seems that emacs uses the term as well:

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/unix/gnu-info/emacs_13.html#SEC59

Pops
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Yank inserts the most recent block of text from the kill buffer, which is the CLI equivalent of a clipboard.

Some ways the kill ring is different from the clipboard on OS X:

  • For example ⌃K, ⌘⌫ and ⌧ add the deleted text to the kill ring
  • Copied text is not added to the kill ring
  • It can only contain plain text
    • Yank acts like paste and match style in rich text views
  • Pressing ⌃K multiple times in a row appends all deleted ranges into a single block
Lri
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  • Does Xcode use a kill ring instead of the clipboard when using Yank in Xcode? Are they integrated or independent? – Daniel Beck Dec 06 '11 at 08:15
  • Text fields in Xcode behave like standard text views in most cases, so the kill ring is independent from the clipboard. (Even though ⌘X adds the deleted text to both.) – Lri Dec 06 '11 at 10:06