Motivation

Be able to search through papers without needing to open them

Resources

link to official webpage

Installation

sudo apt install pdfgrep

version installed:

This is pdfgrep version 2.2.0.

Using poppler version 24.02.0 Using libpcre2 version 10.42 2022-12-11

Use cases

List files containig a matching word

pdfgrep -i -l rhoa *.pdf | less

finds all pdf files containg word rhoa independently on case

Find lines with a word with 3 lines around it for context in a single file

pdfgrep -i -C 3 rhoa Vinarsky_CDD_2025.pdf

Find references to the deposited datasets in GEO (GSE) in Morikawa paper

pdfgrep  -C 3 'GSE' morikawa-et-al-2024.pdf

gives 3 line context around the match