cli.md

CLI

Usage

The general form of the CLI usage is:

python3 -m pdfsyntax COMMAND FILE

You can get quick insights on a PDF file with these commands:

• overview outputs text data about the structure and the metadata.
• disasm outputs a dump of the file structure on the terminal.
• text spatially extracts text content on all pages, as if it was a kind of scan.
• browse outputs static html data that lets you browse the internal structure of the PDF file: the PDF source is pretty-printed and augmented with hyperlinks.

overview

The output shows information about:

• the structure : Version, Pages, Revisions, etc...
• the metadata : Title, Author, Subject, etc...

disasm

The output shows a terse and greppable view of the file internal structure. Please refer to the Disassembler article for details.

text

The output shows a full extract of the text content, with a spatial awareness: the algorithm tries to respect the original layout, as if characters of all sizes were approximately rendered on a fixed-size grid.

fonts

The output shows a list of fonts used in the file, with the following tabular data:

• Name
• Type
• Encoding
• Object number and generation number, comma separated
• Number of pages where it occurs

browse

The generated HTML looks like the raw PDF file with the following additions:

• Pretty-print dictionary object
• Extract an object contained in an object stream and insert it in the flow like a regular object
• Decompress stream and display a small part of it
• Turn indirect object reference into hyperlink
• Turn offset reference (for example a /Prev entry) into hyperlink
• Put some color on key names (for example /Type)
• Display offset of an object

The command writes on the standard output so you need to redirect to a file that you can open in your browser:

python3 -m pdfsyntax browse file.pdf > inspection_file.pdf

This is a link to an EXAMPLE of a full inspection output that you can browse.

Here is another example, as a partial screenshot:

TO BE CONTINUED