GeneralInformation--help
Print a short summary of the options.
-V, --version
Show version information.
PatternInterpretation-F, --fixed-strings
Interpret PATTERN as a list of fixed strings separated by newlines, any of which is to be matched.
-P, --perl-regexp
Interpret PATTERN as a Perl compatible regular expression (PCRE2). See pcre2syntax(3) for a quick
overview.
MatchingControl-ePATTERN, --regexp=PATTERN
Use PATTERN as the pattern to search for. If this option is specified multiple times or combined with
--file, all patterns are tried in turn until one of them matches.
-fFILE, --file=FILE
Read patterns from FILE, one per line. If FILE contains multiple patterns or if this option is
applied multiple times or combined with -e, all patterns are tried in turn until one of them matches.
An empty pattern list matches nothing.
-i, --ignore-case
Ignore case distinctions in both the PATTERN and the input files.
GeneralOutputControl-c, --count
Suppress normal output. Instead print the number of matches for each input file. Note that unlike
grep, multiple matches on the same page will be counted individually.
-p, --page-count
Like -c, but prints the number of matches per page. Implies -n.
--colorWHEN
Surround file names, page numbers and matched text with escape sequences to display them in color on
the terminal. WHEN can be:
always Always use colors, even when stdout
is not a terminal.
never Do not use colors.
auto Use colors only when stdout is a
terminal (this is the default).
-L, --files-without-match
Suppress normal output. Instead print the name of each input file that doesn’t contain a match. This
works well with -Z, but many other output options like -n or -c are ignored when -L is specified.
-l, --files-with-matches
Suppress normal output. Instead print the name of each input file that contains a match. This works
well with -Z, but many other output options like -n or -c are ignored when -l is specified.
-m, --max-countNUM
Stop reading a file after NUM matches. When the -c or --count option is also used, pdfgrep does not
output a count greater than NUM.
-o, --only-matching
Print only the matched part of a line without any surrounding context.
-q, --quiet
Suppress all normal output to stdout. Exit immediately with exit status 0 if a match is found, even
in case of errors. Use this if you only care about the presence of matches, not their number or
content.
LinePrefixControl-H, --with-filename
Print the file name for each match. This is the default setting when there is more than one file to
search.
-h, --no-filename
Suppress the prefixing of file name on output. This is the default setting when there is only one
file to search.
-n, --page-number[=TYPE]
Prefix each match with the number of the page where it was found.
The optional argument TYPE controls how page numbers are determined. If present, it can be one of the
following:
index The index of the page in the PDF,
starting at 1 for the first page.
This is the default.
label The PDF page label. This can be an
arbitrary string per page, set by the
PDF creator (e.g. roman numerals for
the first few pages).
-Z, --null
Output a null byte (called NUL in ASCII and '\0' in C) instead of the colon that usually separates a
filename from the rest of the line. This option makes the output unambiguous in the presence of
colons, spaces or newlines in the filename. It can be used in conjunction with commands such as
xargs-0 or perl-0.
--match-prefix-separatorSEP
Changes the colon used to separate filename, line number and text in the output to SEP, which can be
an arbitrary string. This is useful when filenames contain colons, but only for interactive usage.
For scripting, --null should be used.
ContextControl-ANUM, --after-context=NUM
Print NUM lines of context after matching lines. Contiguous groups of matches are separated by a line
containing --. With -o, this option has no effect.
-BNUM, --before-context=NUM
Print NUM lines of context before matching lines. Contiguous groups of matches are separated by a
line containing --. With -o, this option has no effect.
-CNUM, --context=NUM
Print NUM lines of context before and after matching lines. Contiguous groups of matches are
separated by a line containing --. With -o, this option has no effect.
FileSelection-r, --recursive
Recursively search all files (restricted by --include and --exclude) under each directory, following
symlinks only if they are on the command line.
-R, --dereference-recursive
Same as -r, but follows all symlinks.
--exclude=GLOB
Skip files whose base name matches GLOB. See glob(7) for wildcards you can use. You can use this
option multiple times to exclude more patterns. It takes precedence over --include. Note, that in-
and excludes apply only to files found via --recursive and not to the argument list.
--include=GLOB
Only search files whose base name matches GLOB. See --exclude for details. The default is
*.[Pp][Dd][Ff].
OtherOptions--cache
Use a cache for the rendered text to speed up the operation on large files.
--password=PASSWORD
Use PASSWORD to decrypt the PDF-files. Can be specified multiple times; all passwords will be tried
on all PDFs. Note that this password will show up in your command history and the output of ps(1).
So please do not use this if the security of PASSWORD is important.
--page-range=RANGE
Limit search to a specified set of pages. RANGE is a comma separated list of either a single page
number or a range expression of the form PAGE1-PAGE2. Example: 2-3,5,7-10.
--debug
Enable debug output. Note: Due to limitations of poppler before version 0.30.0, some debug output is
also printed without --debug when using such a poppler version.
--warn-empty
Print a warning to stderr if a PDF contains no searchable text. This is the case for PDFs that
consist only of images, for example scanned documents.
--unac
Remove accents and ligatures from both the search pattern and the PDF documents. This is useful if
you want to search for a word containing "ae", but the PDF uses the single character "æ" instead. See
unac(3) and unaccent(1) for details.
Thisoptionisexperimentalandonlyavailableifpdfgrepiscompiledwithunacsupport.
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