textutil convert PDF to txt producing garbled output

Question

I am trying to convert PDF files to text files using textutil. I don't if there are special types of PDFs that can and cannot be converted. The files I am trying to convert are in a searchable format, which I assume is a minimum requirement. When I convert the file, the text document is completed garbled output. Here is my code:

textutil -convert txt example.pdf

Here are some of the first lines, in case that helps to identify where I am going wrong:

%PDF-1.3
%ƒÂÚÂÎßÛ†–ƒ∆
4 0 obj
<< /Length 5 0 R /Filter /FlateDecode >>
stream
xÌõYè‹∏«flı)8>2”„å,R%Ÿªõ¯fixs9ôM‚<YÅ`„Ô‰W,J¢‘íF3”@^2Z›<ädˇ:(ˇl>òüçuπ´Í¶ñ¶nõº.⁄⁄         
4>~˘œ?Ã_ÕøÕ”W_≠˘Ù’·fl◊OL.ò´øÂKI5ÖÀª∫*≥O_ÃÀk”‘aH|\1OØØù
±Ê˙'sqv0◊ˇ2oÆ√Vñ©˘÷Êmy2jæ»;P+Ú¢(*s˝ikó3>z¸ãõæ8;èè˙΄·ê—z~=|  
¯D˝rËî)WÈå<˝¡ÒˇnÆfl/3¿’UnõÆ4~∫Á;Ú”µ≠J˙4‰JWùîgz8€]êªA@g¸≠kRŸ¯‹÷ùàëeÁÔπUŸÓ÷Ü´≤Œ

I'm guessing it has to do with some encoding feature -- not my area of expertise, so any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

With reference to TEXTUTIL(1) manual page it seems pdf is not between formats managed by this utility: fmt is one of: txt, html, rtf, rtfd, doc, docx, wordml, odt, or webarchive

On Linux/Unix installing a scriptable product like XPDF/pdftotext may be a valid solution like some comment already suggested.

For those on OS X it's possible extract text from PDF by a native OS X automator action ( ..see this answer or last 4' of this tutorial) then consider that automator's workflow can be "scripted" via CLI automator command