pdftotext

pdftotext is a command-line utility that extracts plain text from PDF files. It is distributed as part of two widely used open-source toolkits, Xpdf and Poppler, and is commonly included in Linux, Windows, and macOS environments. The program is designed for straightforward text extraction to support indexing, search, and data processing workflows.

The tool reads a PDF and outputs text, either to a file or to standard output. Options control how the text is produced, including whether to preserve the original layout (-layout) or to extract text in a more linear order (-raw). Users can limit the pages processed with -f (first page) and -l (last page). The output file can be explicitly specified (for example, input.pdf becomes input.txt), or the text can be written to standard output by directing the output to a dash or piping the result to another program. Encoding can be set with -enc to handle different character sets.

Basic usage examples include: pdftotext input.pdf converts the file to input.txt by default; pdftotext input.pdf output.txt writes to a specific file; pdftotext -layout input.pdf creates a text file that preserves the visual layout; pdftotext -f 2 -l 5 report.pdf extracts only pages 2 through 5.

Limitations include potential imperfect text extraction for complex layouts or PDFs with columns, forms, or embedded fonts. Scanned PDFs that contain images of text require OCR preprocessing before useful text can be obtained. pdftotext is often complemented by other tools in the Poppler or Xpdf suites for broader PDF processing needs.

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