title: Copying from clipboard using tkinter without displaying window
body: <p>Running Python 3.4 on Windows 7.</p>
  <p>I need to copy what's stored in the clipboard to a variable in my python program.  I've seen on Stack Overflow that that can be done either with <code>pywin32</code> or <code>tkinter</code>.  Since <code>tkinter</code> is part of the python standard library, I decided that that was the better of the two since the user won't have to install an external module.  Here's the code for getting the clipboard data in <code>tkinter</code>:</p>
  <pre><code>import tkinter
  number = tkinter.Tk().clipboard_get()
  </code></pre>
  <p>This works fine except a blank <code>tkinter</code> window pops up every time this executes.</p>
  <ol>
  <li><p>Why is this happening?  Normally <code>tkinter</code> doesn't display anything until <code>tk().mainloop()</code> is run.</p>
  </li>
  <li><p>Is there any way to avoid this window popping up?  If not, I guess I'll just use <code>pywin32</code>.</p>
  </li>
  </ol>