Search all PDF files in directory, show all matches for specified search text.

search_pdf.sh

#!/bin/sh

if [ ! "$#" -eq "2" ]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 <path> <search_text>"
  exit 1
fi

find "$1" -name '*.pdf' -exec sh -c "pdftotext -q '{}' - | grep --with-filename --label='{}' --color -i '$2'" \;

Example

$ ../literature/search_pdf.sh ../literature/ "irrelevant"
../literature/DockerIntroAnalysisPerformance.pdf:present irrelevant overhead for CPU and memory execution.
../literature/DockerIntroAnalysisPerformance.pdf:KVM and docker present irrelevant overhead for CPU and
../literature/InformationSecurity_Stamp.pdf:ignore details that I deem irrelevant to the topic at hand. You can judge
../literature/ISEC-CIA.pdf:discussion irrelevant), e.g., that people may choose to act on other goals (e.g.,
../literature/RelationshipOfDevOpsToAgileLea_978-3-319-49094-6.pdf:duplicates and 55 irrelevant document types, such as glossaries, indexes and
../literature/whatisdevops_978-1-4503-4134-9.pdf:Irrelevant