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pythonpyperclip

AttributeError: module 'pyperclip' has no attribute 'waitForPaste'

I installed pyperclip (a clipboard utility) on Windows VM and somehow some of the functions are not working. I am trying to use the waitForPaste() function as below:

import pyperclip as pyc  
import os  
pyc.waitForPaste()

However, this is producing the following error:

AttributeError                            Traceback (most recent call
last)   Cell In\[18\], line 1   \----\> 1 pyc.waitForPaste()  
AttributeError: module 'pyperclip' has no attribute 'waitForPaste

Strangely, if the following code works just fine! I was able to write this snippet:

pyc.copy('The text to be copied to the clipboard.')  
pyc.paste()

Which produced:

'The text to be copied to the clipboard.'

I am not facing the same issue on MACOS, only in Windows.

Solution

  • A CTRL+F for "waitForPaste" in the pyperclip source code suggests that the function no longer exists despite still being in the documentation; the only hits it gets are in the documentation. You have a few options if you still need this functionality:

    1. Find a workaround. This could be a similar function from another library or your own custom implementation of it.
    2. Find an old version. It seems like waitForPaste() was implemented at some time but later deleted; if you look back far enough in the history, you might be able to find a version that works.
    3. Ask for the feature back. You can try the pyperclip issues page, although there seems to be quite a bit of backlog there at the moment.
    4. Add the feature back yourself. pyperclip is open-source and publicly editable; if you write a working implementation or find the original implementation in the history, you can create a pull request to add it to the official source.

    Of course, there might be a reason this feature was deleted; if that is the case, it's probably best to let sleeping dogs lie.

    Corroborating evidence (not crucial)

    The pyperclip docs contain the following code snippet and error message to demonstrate the timeout argument in waitForPaste().

    >>> import pyperclip
>>> pyperclip.waitForNewPaste(5)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "c:\github\pyperclip\src\pyperclip\__init__.py", line 689, in waitForNewPaste
    raise PyperclipTimeoutException('waitForNewPaste() timed out after ' + str(timeout) + ' seconds.')
pyperclip.PyperclipTimeoutException: waitForNewPaste() timed out after 5 seconds.

    However, line 689 no longer exists in __init__.py; the last line is 658, which seems to imply that this function once existed but has since been deleted.