[tlug] Re: Search Tools...

[Scott Robbins <scottro@example.com>]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2007 at 05:06:59PM -0700, Frank Jahnke wrote:
> Scott,
> 
> Have you kept up with tools that search for text strings in files?  

Only text files.  I don't work much with pdfs. (See, I actually read the
whole thing before answering.)

So, since I only deal with Excel and Word, I can use antiword and the
other one--the one that has xls2csv as a part of it.  (Hrrm, maybe
that's antiword--there are two programs that will print .doc on the
console, and one will also take an Excel sheet and turn it to a
csv--errm, you might have guessed that from the program's name.)

So therefore, I don't go much beyond grep, locate and find. 

I
> 
> Well, now I do.  My particular need is that I have about 300 PDF files
> that I need to search as a group for a collection of key words.  Right
> now they are on the W2K box, but they can be moved to BSD or XP if
> needed.  Cheap is preferred, but quality is more important.

Is there any way to turn a pdf into txt and use the builtins, e.g. grep?
I'd google it for you, but I'm really tired this week--everyone is, I
think it's the weather. 

I don't know if that's practical but...hrrm, now I'm curious, I'm going
to do a quick google for pdf to text. Hold on.

Ok, there are two that are part of other programs.  xpdf has pdf2text
and ghostscript includes pdf2ascii.  

I don't know if this makes any sense for you, however, as your needs are
usually very highly sophisticated.

-- 

Scott Robbins

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