pdfer

Merge and split PDF files with predictable behavior, strong safety guarantees, and a clean command-line interface.

Download • Quick Start • Usage

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Table of Contents

• Overview
• Design Goals
• Quick Start
• Basic Usage
• Page Range Syntax
• Safety Features
• Building from Source
• Contributing
• License
• Disclaimer

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Overview

pdfer is a small, focused, and reliable PDF utility written in Rust.

It provides two core capabilities:

• Merging PDFs into a single document
• Splitting PDFs into per-page files or selected ranges

The tool prioritizes correctness, safety, and predictable behavior over feature bloat.

pdfer is built for flexibility:

• Precise command-line control
• Automation & scripting
• Developer workflows
• User-friendly desktop usage

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Design Goals

pdfer intentionally keeps its scope narrow and dependable:

• Deterministic behavior
• No silent data corruption
• Strict input validation
• Safe output handling
• Cross-platform portability
• Minimal dependencies

The tool refuses to proceed when encountering ambiguous or unsafe states (e.g., invalid page ranges, non-PDF files, overwrite conflicts).

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Quick Start

Prebuilt Binaries

Download platform-specific binaries from:

https://github.com/syedinsaf/pdfer/releases

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Basic Usage

Show PDF Info

pdfer file.pdf
pdfer *.pdf
pdfer -r ./documents

Displays:

• page count
• PDF version
• metadata (title / author / subject if present)

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Merge PDFs

pdfer merge a.pdf b.pdf -o merged.pdf
pdfer m *.pdf -o combined.pdf

Behavior:

• preserves page order
• validates inputs
• refuses empty PDFs

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Split PDFs

Split all pages:

pdfer split document.pdf

Split selected pages:

pdfer split document.pdf 1,3,5-10

Custom output folder:

pdfer split document.pdf 1-5 -o output_pages

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Page Range Syntax

pdfer supports flexible page selection:

Syntax	Meaning
5	Single page
1,3,7	Specific pages
2-6	Inclusive range
10-	From page 10 to end

Rules:

• Page numbers start at 1
• Ranges are validated strictly
• Invalid specifications fail early

Examples:

pdfer split file.pdf 1-3
pdfer split file.pdf 4,7,9-12
pdfer split file.pdf 5-

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Safety Features

pdfer is designed to avoid destructive mistakes:

• ✔ Overwrite protection
• ✔ Interactive conflict resolution
• ✔ Strict file type validation
• ✔ Refusal on invalid ranges
• ✔ No partial writes on failure

When an output file or directory already exists, pdfer will prompt for:

• overwrite
• rename
• abort

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Building from Source

Requirements

• Rust (stable toolchain)
• Git

Build

git clone https://github.com/syedinsaf/pdfer.git
cd pdfer
cargo build --release

Binary output:

• Linux / macOS → target/release/pdfer
• Windows → target/release/pdfer.exe

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Contributing

Bug reports and improvements are welcome.

Useful information for issues:

• OS and version
• Rust version
• Example PDFs (if possible)
• Exact command used
• Full error output

Pull requests should preserve:

• safety guarantees
• deterministic behavior
• portability

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License

pdfer is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

See LICENSE for details.

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Disclaimer

Use at your own risk.

Always verify important documents after processing.

The author is not responsible for:

• data loss
• corrupted documents
• workflow disruptions

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