PDF Search Tool

A command-line tool written in Python that allows you to batch search for keywords or patterns in PDF files within a specified folder (including subfolders). It supports regular expressions and can display the page number and surrounding context of each match.

Features

• Recursively search all PDF files in a given folder and its subfolders
• Support for plain text or regular expression search
• Optionally display the page number where each match is found
• Optionally display surrounding context characters around each match

Installation

Make sure to install PyMuPDF:

pip install PyMuPDF

Usage

python your_script.py --term "search_term" [--folder "folder_path"] [--regex] [--printpages] [--context number]

Arguments

Argument	Description	Required	Default
--term	The word or regex pattern to search for	Yes	-
--folder	Folder path to search (recursively)	No	Current directory
--regex	Enable regular expression search	No	Disabled
--printpages	Show page numbers of matches	No	Disabled
--context	Show this many characters before/after the match	No	No context shown

Examples

• Search for the word "example" in the current directory and subdirectories:

  python your_script.py --term example

• Search using a regex pattern \btest\d+\b in the ./pdfs folder:

  python your_script.py --folder ./pdfs --term "\\btest\\d+\\b" --regex

• Show page numbers and 20 characters of context around each match:

  python your_script.py --term "important" --printpages --context 20

Notes

• If --folder is not specified, the current directory (.) is used by default.
• When using regular expressions, be careful with shell escaping (e.g., use \\ for backslashes).
• This tool cannot search scanned PDFs (images). It only works on PDFs with embedded text.
• Use in a UTF-8 environment to avoid encoding issues.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0).
See LICENSE for details.