> On Sep 1, 2015, at 1:50 PM, SUBSCRIBE MACSCRPT Inyo55 <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> How do I make use of the stdout in Applescript?  Is it a scriptable object, or variable?

Hi Bob,

In the command line world, Standard Output (stdout) is one of three data streams, the other two being Standard In (stdin) and Standard Error (stderr). Unless they’re redirected, stdin is accepted from the keyboard and stdout and stderr are sent to the display screen. One may indeed redirect stdout to memory for further processing or writing to a file. However, as Bill pointed out, it’s simplest to just use the optional PDFTOTEXT "text-file" parameter.

The SYNOPSIS from the PDFTOTEXT man page shows the basic structure of the command:
	pdftotext [options] [PDF-file [text-file]]

For those unfamiliar with shell commands, the four parts shown above are used to specify:
1. The command itself, “pdftotext”.
2. Any optional parameters desired, such as first and last pages from which to extract — “pdftotext -f 5 -l 8” would do pages 5, 6, 7, and 8.
3. The POSIX path to the PDF file to be read.
4. The POSIX path to the text file to create (if needed) and to write the extracted text.

The square brackets in the SYNOPSIS above indicate parameters, or groups of parameters, that are optional.

HTH,
Stan C.