Thank you, Shane. 
What is framework "foundation" and "quartz"?  Is the applescript calling a separate utility somewhere using those commands?  Or, are they part of the OSX Applescript?
I thought about bypassing Acrobat,to make the new documents, but was not sure how reliable it would be, or how it is possible.

A typical PDF we get might have 1000 or more pages.  Each page has a Barcode with number on the upper right of the page.  The barcodes are the same in a sequential series of pages, like chapters in a book.  Then the barcode changes.  User wants all the "chapters" to be new and separate PDF files.  
Converting the original PDF to text (using third party utility PDFTOTEXT) and getting a list of the number of pages in each "chapter" with grep was the easy part.
Next I want to take those lists to go into the original PDF and break out the sections as separate PDF files all with the same barcodes on their pages.  I am not opposed to bypassing Acrobat, just do not understand how it can be done.
Thanks,
Bob R.