pdf-inspect

pdf-inspect manual

Basic usage is to call pdf-inspect with a PDF file as the first argument, and more arguments to specify what to inspect.

pdf-inspect [options] example.pdf [root] selector* [action]

The following options are defined:

• -p password: Use the given password to decrypt the PDF file.
• -show-metadata: Show information from the Document Information dictionary and the file metadata stream in Human-Readable form and exit.

Root can be one of:

• catalog (default): The Document Catalog dictionary
• info: The Document Information dictionary
• trailer: The file trailer dictionary
• An PDF object number in the form of n.g where n is the object number and g is the generation number, or just n if the generation number is 0.

If no root is given, catalog is assumed.

A sequence of selectors can be used to follow the logical structure of the PDF file, starting from the root. The meaning of each selector depends on the type of the current object:

• For dictionaries, the selector is interpreted as a dictionary key. The key name can optionally be prefixed with a slash /. The new current object is the corresponding value in the dictionary.

• As a special case, if the current object is the root of the page tree, the selector can be a page number. In this case, the current object is the corresponding page dictionary.

• If the current object is an array, the selector is interpreted as an index (0-based). The new current object is the array element at the index.

• If the current object is a stream, the selector is interpreted as a key in the stream dictionary. The key name can optionally be prefixed with a slash /. The new current object is the value of the key. The special selector dict can be used to access the stream dict as a whole.

The optional action decides what to do with the current object:

• @show (default): Print the current object to stdout in a human-readable form.

• @raw (when the current object is a stream): Write the raw stream data to stdout. This does not apply any stream filters.

• @stream (when the current object is a stream): Decode the stream data and write it to stdout.

• @contents (when the current object is a page dictionary): Write the complete content stream of the page to stdout.

• @font (when the current object is a font dictionary): Write human-readable information about the font to stdout.