ppdfgrep

A wrapper around pdfgrep that runs a parallel instance of it for every PDF file specified on the command line, or found while walking a directory hierarchy. Useful for grepping piles of datasheets.

Matches are buffered and printed in order of the PDFs being searched so that matches from different PDFs do not appear interleaved on the screen.

Installation

$ go install github.com/dhendrix/ppdfgrep@latest

or, from a checkout of this repository:

$ go build

Requirements

• Go
• pdfgrep installed and available in your $PATH

Usage

ppdfgrep [OPTION...] PATTERN [FILE...]

PATTERN is a regular expression as understood by pdfgrep. FILE... are one or more PDF files and/or directories; a directory is searched recursively only when -r is given.

Options are forwarded to pdfgrep (for example -i or -l), with one exception: -r / --recursive, which ppdfgrep consumes itself.

Examples:

# grep a single file
$ ppdfgrep "LM358" datasheet.pdf

# list PDFs in . that contain a match
$ ppdfgrep -l "0x4005" .
  
# recursive, case-insensitive search that prints filenames 
# containing "errata" along with context
$ ppdfgrep -riH "errata" datasheets/      

Exit codes

Mirroring pdfgrep's own convention:

Code	Meaning
0	A match was found
1	No match was found, or pdfgrep failed on one or more files
2	Tool error: bad usage, pdfgrep not installed, unreadable input

Notes

• At most runtime.NumCPU() pdfgrep processes run concurrently
• Only files whose magic bytes identify them as PDFs are grepped. A file with a .pdf extension that is not actually a PDF is skipped with a warning.
• Hidden files (names beginning with .) are skipped, but hidden directories are still descended into.
• Any short option containing r enables recursion, e.g. -ri both searches recursively and forwards -i to pdfgrep.