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Elliott B
Asked: 2015-02-05 13:43:29 +0800 CST

pdftk: edit PDF file in-place

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Using PDFtk Server, I want to rotate a PDF file 90˚ and save it in-place, to overwrite the input file. I tried the following, but it fails, probably because it starts writing before the file is finished reading.

pdftk in.pdf cat 1-endright output - > in.pdf
pdf

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    in your operation bash overwrite in.pdf file before call pdftk. You can't do it that way. I would recommend something like

    pdftk in.pdf cat 1-endright output in-new.pdf && mv in-new.pdf in.pdf

    This command also protect you when converting fail - file would not be overwriten.

    • 5

  2. Use moreutils sponge for this: 

    pdftk in.pdf cat 1-endright output - | sponge in.pdf

    One bug I've found is that pdftk doesn't always return non-zero on error, meaning that in.pdf may be wiped (sponge doesn't wipe if zero exit status).

    • 1