Open your editor, pipe the output to the system clipboard.

This opens up your $EDITOR or $VISUAL using the editor-open library. It then takes the edited text and sends it to the X11 clipboard.

As such, this will only work if you have X11. Translated, this is limited to Linux and BSD.

pipeclip

This program pops open your $EDITOR or $VISUAL, takes whatever you inputted into the file, and pipes it to the X clipboard.

As such, this program only works on Linux and BSD.

I've tested it on Arch Linux and FreeBSD.

Installation

pipeclip is written in Haskell, so please install Haskell first: https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell/blob/master/install.md.

You also need to have xclip or xsel installed.

Then,

cabal install pipeclip

Usage

pipeclip v.0.1.0.0
Copyright (c) 2015, Peter Harpending.
Licensed under the FreeBSD license. See --license for info.

OPTIONS
    -h,--help             Show this page
    --license             Print out the license.
    --stdout              Print output to stdout instead of piping to the clipboard.
    -t,--template EXT     Name the temporary file the editor edits tmp.EXT so that 
                          it has highlighting and stuff.