OS X copy paste into Terminal adds fdbf bfb9 b083 to beginning and end of selection

For the life of me, I can't figure this out.

When using a browser (doesnt matter which), if I select text, then paste in Vim or Neovim or Nano, I see characters added to the beginning and end of my selection.

For example, I select "answer" from this page, then paste it over in Terminal I get:

??????answer??????

Saving this pasted data to file with .bin extension and then opening in Vim with this auto command helper:

augroup Binary
   au!
   au BufReadPre  *.bin let &bin=1
   au BufReadPost *.bin if &bin | %!xxd
   au BufReadPost *.bin set ft=xxd | endif
   au BufWritePre *.bin if &bin | %!xxd -r
   au BufWritePre *.bin endif
   au BufWritePost *.bin if &bin | %!xxd
   au BufWritePost *.bin set nomod | endif
augroup END

I get this output:

0000000: fdbf bfb9 b083 616e 7377 6572 fdbf bfb9  ......answer....
0000010: b083 0a                                  ...

So, you can see that I get

fdbf bfb9 b083

added to the beginning, and I get

fdbf bfb9 b083

added to the end.

Any ideas on what this is about?

The only recent major change I can remember is upgrading OS X to Yosemite, so sure that's potentially a large update.

EDIT: I suspect Terminal is the source of the issue. I've been able to use iTerm2 without this problem.

mrk

Posted 2016-02-25T15:54:24.907

Reputation: 111

Not exactly sure what you are copying, but could they be Unicode curly quotes? – baum – 2016-02-25T19:35:45.113

@baum, I explicitly mentioned an example of what I am copying "For example, I select 'answer' from this page, then paste it over in Terminal I get"... – mrk – 2016-02-26T15:05:23.177

two questions - what do you get when you paste in it in TextEdit, and what Terminal settings are you using (actually: "profile" settings in Terminal.app's preferences) – Florenz Kley – 2016-03-01T17:27:19.373

@FlorenzKley not sure TextEdit is a viable option here, it forces me to save in RTF or ODT or other formats which add all kinds of extra c**p into the file :) But did it anyways and opening the file with vim or hex editor, I don't get the fdbf stuff in it. I have narrowed down the issue to Terminal. – mrk – 2016-03-01T18:46:18.087

@FlorenzKley without dumping my entire Terminal preferences, some notable settings are (untouched by me aka The Defaults)...terminfo = xterm-256color, text-encoding = Unicode (UTF-8) – mrk – 2016-03-01T18:48:59.430

wrt to TextEdit: to switch between formats, I use the menu Format -> Make Rich Text or Format -> Make Plain Text, depending on what format the open window is currently in. Adds nothing to it. wrt to Terminal.app: I asked because I had some ideas about the character encoding. But I can't replicate anything, neither on Mavericks, nor Yosemite, nor El Cap. Can you copy something (like "answer" above) and then in Terminal and iTerm do a "pbpaste | od -x" please? For me the result is "0000000 6e61 7773 7265", which spells out to just "answer"... – Florenz Kley – 2016-03-02T12:04:17.497

@FlorenzKley Hmm, ok, I copy that text and in Terminal do pbpaste|od -x and get almost what u get..... pbpaste|od -x 0000000 6e61 7773 7265 0000006. Using MacVim with no vimrc ( vim -u NONE), using nano, using Neovim, using default OS X vim install, pasting in still gives me the FDBF stuff....so by including Nano, I'm trying to rule out a stock-vim/vim/neovim as the issue. The pbpaste into iTerm and Terminal is the same, yet the paste (cmd-V) into vi, vim, nano, neovim is messed up.... – mrk – 2016-03-02T19:46:36.657

I'm going to cross post this to apple.stackexchange.com, just now found that site. – mrk – 2016-03-02T19:48:33.173

OS X copy paste into Terminal adds fdbf bfb9 b083 to beginning and end of selection

Answers