I have a text file which contains the location of a list of pdf files. I am writing a windows batch file that needs to read this line by line and append in a command which will be executed to merge all the pdfs into 1 pdf using pdftk.
Below is the example command:
pdftk "C:\test\1.pdf" "C:\test\2.pdf"......"C:\test\50.pdf" cat output merged.pdf
I came across this How do you loop through each line in a text file using a windows batch file? for reading text file.
But how do I read and append to a variable which can then be used for the command mentioned above?
Assuming your list of pdf files looks like this
pdf1.pdf
pdf2.pdf
pdf3.pdf
Then you can use this to concatenate them into one variable
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set files=
for /f "tokens=*" %%a in (pdfs.txt) do (
if defined files (
set files=!files! "%%a"
) else (
set files="%%a"
)
)
pdftk !files! cat output merged.pdf
The if else is there to remove the leading space from the variable, I wasn't sure if that would make a difference. If it doesn't then you can get rid of it and just use
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set files=
for /f "tokens=*" %%a in (pdfs.txt) do (
set files=!files! "%%a"
)
pdftk !files! cat output merged.pdf