[Tfug] Need command line help regarding searching files for strings...

[Claude Rubinson]

On Mon, Feb 09, 2009 at 04:23:30PM -0700, Paul Lemmons wrote:
>> Each report has an index file, a text version and a PDF version.  The
>> best descriptors of the reports are in the first page of each .PDF
>> report.  So I need to do a command-line search within the directory
>> (looking within all .pdf files) for strings like "electronic voting"
>> or "diebold" or "second amendment" or the like :).
>
> Are you looking for something like this:  
> http://www.debianadmin.com/quick-pdf-sorting-and-searching-swish.html

I think the question might be too vague.  I was wondering why not just
do a pdftotext (extracting just the first page of interest along the
way) and then use standard unix shell tools.  But my more immediate
question is if the text version is really different from the PDF
version.  If not, why not just use standard unix shell tools?

C.