Small Haskell utility that substitutes the clipboard text to another program's command line arguments. See file for usage/examples.

withcb.hs

-- About: Run a command using the text on the clipboard.
-- 
-- The command line arguments form the command. If "{}" is
-- in the arguments, it is substituted with the text from the
-- clipboard, otherwise the clipboard text is appended to the end.

-- Examples:
--  copy the filename on the clipboard to the parent directory
--  > withcb cp {} ../
-- 
--  unzip the filename on the clipboard in the current directory
--  > withcb unzip
--
--  download file who's url is in the clipboard
--  > withcb wget

import Data.List
import Data.Maybe
import System.Process
import System.Environment
import System.Clipboard (getClipboardString)

processArgs :: [String] -> String -> [String]
processArgs args subst = case elemIndex "{}" args of
                           Just i -> let (h, _:t) = splitAt i args
                                    in h ++ (subst:t)
                           Nothing -> args ++ [subst]

main :: IO ()
main = do
  args <- getArgs
  maybeCB <- getClipboardString

  let cb = fromMaybe (error "Cliboard empty") maybeCB

  let cmd = unwords (processArgs args cb)
  code <- system cmd
  putStrLn $ "done. " ++ show code