Quite a while back I wrote an article about how I use GNU screen’s scrollback buffer. In the article I detailed how to copy the scrollback buffer into the Mac clipboard, which made it easy to copy data to other Mac applications. Unfortunately, I recently moved to Leopard and discovered this no longer works. In this short article I will explain an updated procedure that works for Leopard.
GNU Screen is a UNIX tool that allows multiple console applications to be run, each in its own “window”, from the same terminal. In a single Screen session, you can run interactive shells, mail programs, SSH sessions, and other console based applications, and you can easily switch between these using hotkeys. You can even split up the Screen display so that multiple Screen windows can be viewed at the same time.
If you’ve never used Screen, but frequently use console applications, it is definitely a tool worth exploring. An introduction to Screen can be found on the Kuro5hin website.
In this article I share my experience with one of my favorite screen features: its scrollback buffer. As you interact with a Screen window, Screen stores a configurable number of lines of history in its scrollback buffer. The scrollback buffer makes it easy to browse or even search through the history of your windows. In addition, it makes it easy to copy and paste any section of text from the history.