trying to script a command line

[Charles Jones]

Ah those darn spaces sure cause problems :)  Give this a try:

$ cat I-A-files.txt | sed 's/ /\\ /g' | xargs cat | pdftk - output 
I-a.pdf verbose

It works for my test case:
$ cat file.txt
file with spaces
some other file

$ cat "file with spaces"
This is the contents of a file with spaces
$ cat some\ other\ file
This is some other file

$ cat file.txt | sed 's/ /\\ /g' |xargs cat
This is the contents of a file with spaces
This is some other file

Probably a more elegant way to do it, but I'm late for dinner :-)

-Charles


Craig White wrote:
> That doesn't seem to work. I quoted the part of the man page that the
> '-' is used to pass only a single PDF into pdftk via stdin and thus the
> xargs thing seems not to fly.
>
> $ cat I-A-files.txt | xargs -0 pdftk cat output I-A.pdf verbose
> Error: No input files.  Exiting.
> Errors encountered.  No output created.
> Done.  Input errors, so no output created.
>
> Thanks
>
> Craig
>
> On Tue, 2008-03-04 at 17:24 -0700, Charles Jones wrote:
>   
>> Give this a try:
>>
>> cat /path/to/filenames_file.xt |xargs pdftk
>>
>> -Charles
>>
>> Craig White wrote:
>>     
>>> I have an awkward situation with pdftk
>>>
>>> I have a file with filenames that I want to pass to pdftk as input
>>> files.
>>>
>>> according to the man page...
>>> <input PDF files | - | PROMPT>
>>>   A list of the input PDF files. If you plan to combine these PDFs
>>>   (without using handles) then list files in the  order  you  want
>>>   them combined.  Use - to pass a single PDF into pdftk via stdin.
>>>
>>> and thus, this doesn't work...
>>>
>>> pdftk `cat "/mypath/to/I-A-files.txt"` cat output I-A.pdf verbose 
>>>
>>> fails on spaces within the paths/filenames in that file.
>>>
>>> I have tried both escaping the spaces with \ and enclosing each path
>>> within a double quote but neither works.
>>>
>>> I have also tried (which fails)...
>>>
>>> $ cat "/mypath/to/I-A-files.txt" | pdftk - cat output I-A.pdf verbose
>>> Error: Failed to open PDF file:
>>>    -
>>> Errors encountered.  No output created.
>>> Done.  Input errors, so no output created.
>>> sh-3.2$ ls -l
>>> total 4440
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 craig administrative      10 2008-03-04 15:15 doc_toc.html
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 craig administrative    1898 2008-03-04 15:30 I-A-files.txt
>>>
>>> Any suggestions on this?
>>>
>>> T
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