PDF commands and arguments

PDFStreamKeywords.txt

# ZERO Arguments

B
b
B*
b*
BI
BT
BX
EI
EMC
ET
EX
F
f
f*
h
ID
n
Q
q
S
s
T*
W
W*

# ONE ARGUMENT

(string) '     (yes a single f..ing ' is a keyword)
/name BMC
/name CS
/name cs
/name Do
1.0 G
1.0 g
/name gs
1.0 i
1.0 J
1.0 j
1.0 M
/name MP
/name ri
/name sh
1.0 Tc
(string) Tj
[array] TJ
1.0 TL
1.0 Tr
1.0 Ts
1.0 Tw
1.0 Tz
1.0 w

# TWO 

/name <<dictionary>> BDC
1.0 1.0 d
1.0 1.0 d0
/name <<dictionary>> DP
1.0 1.0 l
1.0 1.0 m
1.0 1.0 TD
1.0 1.0 Td
/name 1.0 Tf

# THREE

1.0 1.0 (string) "  yes another horrible character for a keyword
1.0 1.0 1.0 RG
1.0 1.0 1.0 rg

# FOUR

1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 K
1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 k
1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 re
1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 v
1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 y

# SIX

1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 c
1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 cm
1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 d1
1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 Tm

# VARIABLE

SC \d (1,3,4)
sc \d (1,3,4)
SCN \d (1,3,4) | /name
scn \d (1,3,4) | /name

why does everything look backwards? In postscript and PDF, arguments are stack based. Arguments are simply pushed onto the stack. When an operator is called, it pops the number of arguments it needs off the stack. So yes postscript can have stack underflow runtime errors and crash, where as PDF will simply abort this command stream.

• Name types begin with a / eg /falcon all characters are allowed except null.
• Dictionaries are enclosed in << and >> and are of the form << /Key value >> value can be any valid type, including names.
• Arrays are enclosed in [ and ] and contain a list of values, each can be any type.
• Strings are enclosed in ( and ) and use the regular escape character \ so a ( and ) can appear in a string as long as it's prefixed with \

All other types are represented as strings, eg Boolean uses true and false Integers 4096 Reals (floats) 1.234

There is also an indirect type, however these will never appear in a command stream.

I tried to find an example that had many different types. However this one uses hex strings rather than character strings This example was too large, so I deleted it.

Documentation for the Foundation framework Regular Expression class: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nsregularexpression?language=objc