Urxvt pasting from clipboard.. efficient, fast, clean

Question

All urxvt users know this problem: you cannot paste from X clipboard into urxvt.
There are various workarounds.  Many of them rely on synchronizing primary selection with clipboard (which I do not like.  I don't want to "lose" a buffer).  this can be in the form of autocutsel, or keybinds to do something like "xsel -bo | xsel -p", which has the additional disadvantage it requires an extra keyboard shortcut (one to sync the primary selection, one to do the actual paste).
I was wondering what would be a simple and clean way to paste the clipboard into urxvt (by using a -but only one- keyboard shortcut), without touching the primary selection.
I came up with putting this in my .xbindkeysrc
"xdotool type "$(xsel -bo)""
alt+Insert
But it's not perfect.  I also tried with --clearmodifiers.  If you try this out, you'll notice sometimes the paste will work, sometimes it will work half.  Sometimes it replaces existing text, sometimes it will do nothing, and the best part is sometimes if you do backspace or stuff like that it behaves differently, I actually messed up my keyboard events with this.
Anyone an idea for the "perfect" way to go?

Answer 1

realturner wrote:
I've just found this page recently and made a solution:
#! perl -w
# Usage:
# URxvt.perl-ext-common: clipboard
# URxvt.keysym.Mod4-c: perl:clipboard:copy
# URxvt.keysym.Mod4-v: perl:clipboard:paste
# consult command "xmodmap" to see what your modifier mapped into.
sub copy {
my ($self) = @_;
my $pid = open( pout, "| xsel -ib" ) or die "fork";
print pout $self->selection;
close(pout) or die "close";
sub paste {
my ($self) = @_;
my $content = `xsel -ob` ;
$self->tt_write ($content);
sub on_user_command {
my ($self, $cmd) = @_;
if ($cmd eq "clipboard:copy") {
$self->copy;
if ($cmd eq "clipboard:paste") {
$self->paste;
save this script as /usr/lib/urxvt/perl/clipboard
then add lines in ~/.Xdefaults:
URxvt.perl-ext-common: clipboard
URxvt.keysym.Mod4-c: perl:clipboard:copy
URxvt.keysym.Mod4-v: perl:clipboard:paste
should have a good work for copy/paste via Win+C/V
Edit: changed the method piping to xsel, avoid escape sequence problem.
wow! nice. thank you.
i didn't update this thread for a while, but i noticed that the earlier xdotool based solutions (including mine and Procyon's) sometimes just don't work, and I don't know why i will try this approach for a while
btw is there no recommed userspace location for urxvt scripts? otherwise, package your script please