The pipe | just takes whatever a command prints and passes it somewhere else. Usually I use it to copy output straight to my clipboard.
echo Hello World | clip
Hit Ctrl+V after that. There it is. No selecting text, no right-clicking, just pipes straight to clipboard.
works with almost anything:
pwd | clip # where am I?
ipconfig | clip # network info
type notes.txt | clip # file contents
git rev-parse HEAD | clip # latest commit hash
can pipe into more than just the clipboard.
ipconfig | findstr IPv4 # filter output
dir | sort-object # sort it
dir | measure-object # count files
ipconfig > output.txt # save to file
ipconfig >> output.txt # append to file
Also, it can be combined. This grabs every running process, keeps only the CPU-heavy ones, sorts them, and shows the top 10:
Get-Process |
Where-Object CPU -gt 100 |
Sort-Object CPU -Descending |
Select-Object -First 10
§clip vs Set-Clipboard
Both work in PowerShell. clip also works in CMD. Set-Clipboard is PowerShell only but a bit cleaner:
ipconfig | Set-Clipboard
Get-Clipboard # read it back `ctrl+V`