Copying a rectangular selection to system clipboard

Question

Does anyone know a command or somtething to copy an rectangular selection (as with C-x r M-w / copy-rectange-as-kill) and put the killed rectangle into the system clipboard like with the kill-ring-save command ?

I would something like : 1) copy the rectangle region 2) paste the rectangle in a temporary buffer 3) delete the trailing whitespaces 3) copy the buffer's content to system clipboard but not in the kill-ring (don't mess with the kill-ring) 4) delete the temporary buffer.

Answer 1

(defun copy-rectangle-to-system-clipboard (start end)
  "Like `copy-rectangle-as-kill', but also copy to system clipboard."
  (interactive "r")
  (call-interactively #'copy-rectangle-as-kill)
  (with-temp-buffer
    (yank-rectangle)
    (delete-trailing-whitespace)
    (funcall interprogram-cut-function (buffer-string))))

I have tested it using graphical Emacs 25.2 on macOS.

Answer 2

Apart from deleting trailing whitespace, you get all you need with built-in CUA minor mode. Set it permanently with (cua-mode t) in your emacs config or toggle it interactively. Press C-<Return> to enter rectangle editing, use arrow keys to select the area, and copy it to kill-ring and system clipboard with C-c.

If you do a lot of copying and pasting, have a look at counsel-yank-pop (part of abo-abo's ivy/councel/swiper) that gives you an easy access to emacs kill-ring history. I've bound it to M-y. It makes it convenient to copy several chunks of text from your source and paste them one by one to your target document.