Command Line PDF - Splitting PDFs
Like everyone else in the world, I generate my fair share of PDFs. I also have, on occasion, the need to split them up. There are tons of graphical tools that can do this, but I thought it might be fun to find a command line PDF splitter. Thank goodness, as always, I can stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before.
One way to get the job done is to rely on pdftk, a command line tool that is easy enough to install with the standard commands (sudo apt-get install pdftk).
In my example, I have nine page PDF, but I only want pages 8-9 extracted and put into their own PDF file. To accomplish that, I would use the command shown below…items in bold are the filenames, italics the pages I wanted.
pdftk original9pager.pdf cat 8 9 output short_two_pager.pdf
You can also specify a range of pages, as well as extract every page in the PDF, as shown in the commands below.
Note: I’m relying on the commands offered at Linux Commando and I recommend reading that blog entry in its entirety. I merely note the commands here for my own reference.
Additional Commands
$ pdftk myoldfile.pdf cat 1-2 4-5 output mynewfile.pdf
pdftk has a few more tricks in its back pocket. For example, you can specify a burst operation to split each page in the input file into a separate output file.
$ pdftk myoldfile.pdf burst
By default, the output files are named pg_0001.pdf, pg_0002.pdf, etc.
pdftk is also capable of merging multiple pdf files into one pdf.
$ pdftk pg_0001.pdf pg_0002.pdf pg_0004.pdf pg_0005.pdf output mynewfile.pdf
That would merge the files corresponding to the first, second, fourth and fifth pages into a single output pdf.
Thanks, Peter Leung from Linux Commando for such easy to follow directions.
Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure