How to search contents of multiple pdf files and return the pdf's file name?

Hoxygen232 · 04-28-2013, 08:02 AM

Hi,

I tried this:

Code:

PDF=$(find /"$DIRECTORY"/ -name '*.pdf' -exec pdftotext {} - \; | grep 'palindrom')

in this way "echo "$PDF" prints only some text from the .pdf file in which was found my word "palindrom", but I also want to know the .pdf file name in which he found the word.

In /"$DIRECTORY"/ there are many folders, .pdf and .txt files so I need to return only the .pdf files whose text conversion matches my word "palindrom"

Thanks

pan64 · 04-28-2013, 08:16 AM

actually you can use grep -R or grep -r without find and it will print all the filenames for you

rknichols · 04-28-2013, 08:55 AM

@pan64: Have you ever looked inside a PDF file? The text that gets displayed is not there in plain ASCII.

@Hoxygen232: You will need to write a short script to do what you want:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
String="$1"
shift
for F in "$@"; do
    pdftotext "$F" - | grep -H --label="$F" "$String"
done

Put that in a file named "pdfgrep" in some directory in your $PATH and make it executable. Then you can do:

Code:

find /"$DIRECTORY"/ -name '*.pdf' -exec pdfgrep 'palindrom' {} +

Hoxygen232 · 04-28-2013, 08:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan64

actually you can use grep -R or grep -r without find and it will print all the filenames for you

ok but how? Besides I need to convert every pdf to txt before using grep that's why I used find.

Hoxygen232 · 04-28-2013, 09:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rknichols

@pan64: Have you ever looked inside a PDF file? The text that gets displayed is not there in plain ASCII.

@Hoxygen232: You will need to write a short script to do what you want:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
String="$1"
shift
for F in "$@"; do
    pdftotext "$F" - | grep -H --label="$F" "$String"
done

Put that in a file named "pdfgrep" in some directory in your $PATH and make it executable. Then you can do:

Code:

find /"$DIRECTORY"/ -name '*.pdf' -exec pdfgrep 'palindrom' {} +

perfect, it works