PDF Splitter

A simple yet powerful command-line tool to split PDF files into multiple files based on specified page ranges.

Features

• Split a PDF into multiple files based on defined page ranges
• Extract individual pages or series of pages
• Automatically organize output files in a clear folder structure
• Simple command-line interface

Installation

Prerequisites

Python 3.6 or higher PyPDF2 library

Installation Steps

1. Clone this repository or download the pdf_splitter.py script

git clone https://github.com/your-username/pdf-splitter.git
cd pdf-splitter

2. Install the required dependencies

pip install PyPDF2

Usage

The basic syntax is:

python pdf_splitter.py path/to/file.pdf range1 range2 range3 ...

Where:

• path/to/file.pdf is the path to the PDF file you want to split
• range1 range2 range3 ... are the page ranges to extract

Page Range Format

Page ranges can be specified in two ways:

An individual page: 5 (extracts only page 5) A range of pages: 1-5 (extracts pages 1 through 5 inclusive)

Examples

Extract pages 1 to 5, 10 to 15, and page 20 from a PDF:

python pdf_splitter.py document.pdf 1-5 10-15 20

Additional Options

--output or -o: Specify a custom output folder (default: "output")

python pdf_splitter.py document.pdf 1-5 10-15 --output my_extracts

Output File Structure

The generated PDF files are organized in a two-level folder structure:

output_folder/
└── original_filename/
    ├── original_filename_range1.pdf
    ├── original_filename_range2.pdf
    └── ...

For example, if you run:

python pdf_splitter.py report.pdf 1-5 10-15 20

You will get:

output/
└── report/
    ├── report_1-5.pdf
    ├── report_10-15.pdf
    └── report_20-20.pdf

Known Limitations

• Page numbers start at 1 (as in a normal PDF reader)
• Invalid page ranges (e.g., pages that don't exist in the document) will be ignored with a warning

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.