Input and Output Files

The typical pattern for usage is

and the simplest concrete example, assuming the existence of a file in.pdf is:

which copies in.pdf to out.pdf. The input and output may be the same file. Of course, we should like to do more interesting things to the PDF file than that!

Files on the command line are distinguished from other input by their containing a period. If an input file does not contain a period, it should be preceded by -i. For example:

A whole directory of files may be added (where a command supports multiple files) by using the -idir option:

The files in the directory myfiles are considered in alphabetical order. They must all be PDF files. If the names of the files are numeric, leading zeroes will be required for the order to be correct (e.g 001.pdf, 002.pdf etc).