NYCPHP Meetup

[Daniel Convissor]

On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 08:42:55PM -0500, DeWitt, Michael wrote:
> I am using xpdf to get text out of pdfs.

... IF you've got X windows going.

Let's see what Panix has...

d> apropos pdf | grep text

  latex, elatex, lambda, pdflatex (1) - structured text formatting and
    typesetting
  pdftotext (1) - Portable Document Format (PDF) to text converter 
    (version 2.02)

That second one looks like it'll fit the bill.

d> man pdftotext
       ... snip ...
       Pdftotext  reads the PDF file, PDF-file, and writes a text
       file, text-file.  If text-file is not specified, pdftotext
       converts  file.pdf  to file.txt.  If text-file is '-', the
       text is sent to stdout.
       ... snip ...

d> pdftotext afile.pdf - | grep stringicareabout

Works like a charm.

Enjoy,

--Dan

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