PDF Pdftotext Poppler

pdftotext (Poppler) (+2)

pdftotext (Poppler)

Preferred tool for batch PDF text extraction (WRK-1277 finding).

# Single file
pdftotext document.pdf output.txt
pdftotext -layout document.pdf output.txt  # Preserve layout

Batch Processing Pattern (Proven at 297K scale)

Use subprocess.run(timeout=N) for reliable timeout handling in parallel workers:

import subprocess
from concurrent.futures import ProcessPoolExecutor

def extract_text(pdf_path: str, timeout: int = 30) -> str | None:
    """Extract text via pdftotext subprocess — killable on timeout."""
    try:
        result = subprocess.run(
            ["pdftotext", pdf_path, "-"],
            capture_output=True, text=True, timeout=timeout
        )
        return result.stdout if result.returncode == 0 else None
    except subprocess.TimeoutExpired:
        return None  # Process killed cleanly by OS

# 8 workers, chunksize=50 — sustained ~49 files/second
with ProcessPoolExecutor(max_workers=8) as pool:
    results = list(pool.map(extract_text, pdf_paths, chunksize=50))

Why subprocess, not pdfplumber? pdfplumber runs in-process and can enter kernel D-state (uninterruptible disk sleep) on NTFS/NFS mounts. SIGALRM cannot interrupt kernel I/O — the process hangs forever. subprocess.run(timeout=N) runs pdftotext in a separate process that the OS can kill reliably via SIGTERM.

Performance (WRK-1277 Benchmarks)

qpdf

# Merge PDFs
qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf

# Split pages
qpdf document.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- first_five.pdf

# Decrypt
qpdf --decrypt encrypted.pdf decrypted.pdf

pdftk

# Merge
pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged.pdf

# Split
pdftk document.pdf burst output page_%02d.pdf

# Rotate
pdftk document.pdf cat 1-endeast output rotated.pdf