PDFgrep text search (CLI)

[__philippe]

PDFgrep (CLI utility) ...alternative to firing up cumbersome Acrobat/Foxit...

Nifty utility to swiftly Search text inside PDF file(s); Works much like grep, except it operates on pages instead of lines.

Simple usage:

PDFgrep file searchstring

Can also search inside a bunch of pdf files at once:

PDFgrep -r --include *.pdf searchstring

Can even return the relevant page number hit

PDFgrep -r --include *.pdf searchstring -n

Binary distro package (1.7MB) comes complete with man page, usage examples, changelog.

Developer's site (includes additional PDF-related tools, besides PDFgrep)
http://soft.rubypdf.com/software/pdfgre ... ws-version

PDFgrep Win-32 binary:
http://soft.rubypdf.com/download/pdfgre ... -win32.zip

Tested under WinXP and Win7.
Recommended.

[Specular]

I wonder what the Order purchase drop-down selection is for, commercial use? Doesn't appear to have any explanation.

[__philippe]

That's puzzling me too,

the more so considering pdfgrep-1.4.0-win32.zip distribution package includes

• a COPYING file which is a plain "GNU General Public License".
• an AUTHORS file pointing to the original product's developers,

  

among which Hans-Peter Deifel

Furthermore,

it turns out this specific win32 product is actually a fork of the original GNU/Unix PDFgrep maintained by pdfgrep.org ,
plainly labeling itself as "Free Software Licensed under the GPL version 2 or later."
Developer HP Deifel by-line also figures in the version release annoucements.


Go figure...

[__philippe]

PDFgrep users,.. Beware

pdfgrep [OPTION]... PATTERN FILE...

• FILE names ARE case sensitive, while
• PATTERN search strings are NOT

Using or not using the -i OPTION parameter to supersede case sensitivity won't make a whiff of difference in this specific implementation,
whatever its PDFgrep.txt man page mumbles about it.

Trust me on this one,
I have been throwing enough of a tantrum over PDFgrep aberrant parsing of file names before the obvious cause finally dawned on me ...