selection get

selection get ?-displayof window? ?-selection selection? ?-type'' type?

Retrieves the value of selection from window 's display and returns it as a result. Selection defaults to PRIMARY and window defaults to ".". Type specifies the form in which the selection is to be returned (the desired "target" for conversion, in ICCCM terminology), and should be an atom name such as STRING or FILE_NAME; see the Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual for complete details. Type defaults to STRING. The selection owner may choose to return the selection in any of several different representation formats, such as STRING, ATOM, INTEGER, etc. (this format is different than the selection type; see the ICCCM for all the confusing details). If the selection is returned in a non-string format, such as INTEGER or ATOM, the selection command converts it to string format as a collection of fields separated by spaces: atoms are converted to their textual names, and anything else is converted to hexadecimal integers.

One note to encodings: use -type UTF8_STRING if you get mangled characters on utf-8 systems, as explained in the selection article. This applies also to clipboard get.