All you have to do it hook into the paste event, let it finish by breaking the callstack and then read the value.

It might seem ugly but it is very crossbrowser friendly and saves you creating a lot of crappy code just to read the actual clipboard.

$(.numeric).bind('paste', function (event) {



  var $this = $(this); //save reference to element for use laster





  setTimeout(function(){ //break the callstack to let the event finish



    alert($this.val()); //read the value of the input field   



  },0); 

});

See it in action here: http://jsfiddle.net/Yqrtb/2/

Update:

Since i just recently had to do something similar, i thought i'd share my final implementation, it goes like this:

$('textarea').on('paste',function(e) {

    //store references for lateer use

    var domTextarea = this,

        txt = domTextarea.value,

        startPos = domTextarea.selectionStart,

        endPos = domTextarea.selectionEnd,

        scrollTop = domTextarea.scrollTop;



    //clear textarea temporarily (user wont notice)

    domTextarea.value = '';



    setTimeout(function () {

        //get pasted value

        var pastedValue = domTextarea.value;



        //do work on pastedValue here, if you need to change/validate it before applying the paste



        //recreate textarea as it would be if we hadn't interupted the paste operation

        domTextarea.value = txt.substring(0, startPos) + pastedValue + txt.substring(endPos, txt.length);

        domTextarea.focus();

        domTextarea.selectionStart = domTextarea.selectionEnd = startPos + pastedValue.length;

        domTextarea.scrollTop = scrollTop;



        //do work on pastedValue here if you simply need to parse its ccontents without modifying it





    }, 0);

});