unix script, running a command on multiple files

Question

I have no previous experience with writing a unix script but what I want seems like a simple task.. I want to run this command for all the pdf files in a folder

pdf2txt.py -o naacl06-shinyama.html samples/naacl06-shinyama.pdf

if there is a file called anypdf.pdf the command would look like:

pdf2txt.py -o anypdf.html samples/anypdf.pdf

so if my folder includes 3 pdf files like, abc.pdf aaa.pdf bbb.pdf I want to end up with abc.html aaa.html and bbb.html

thanks in advance

John Kugelman · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-23 20:20:56Z

1

for pdf in samples/*.pdf; do
    html=$(basename "$pdf" .pdf).html
    pdf2txt.py -o "$html" "$pdf"
done

If you don't have basename then try this alternative, which uses bash's ## and % constructs to do replacements inline.

#!/bin/bash

for pdf in samples/*.pdf; do
    html=${pdf##*/};
    html=${html%.pdf}.html
    pdf2txt.py -o "$html" "$pdf"
done

answered Jul 23, 2013 at 20:20

John Kugelman

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2 Comments

s_curry_s Over a year ago

thanks but I getting a (i believe) a python error like TypeError: __init__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'outdir'

John Kugelman Over a year ago

@GorkemYurtseven Check that it's running pdf2txt.py with the correct arguments. That error's coming from Python, not from the shell.

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