Hello Monks,

I am relatively new to programming in perl and am learning in a sort of trial by fire kind of way since I'm working directly on projects for work. My current problem is that I have a very large number of pdfs (22,000 +) of varying numbers of pages. I need to take those pdfs and combine them into single files split by a few groups. For example my groups will be one page, two page, three and four page, five through eight page and nine plus page documents. I have the start of a solution that seems to work fairly well but I have no real reference point for how good or bad my solution is other than my own opinion.

I was hoping that you could take a look at the code and see if I'm on the right track or if there are some egregious errors that need to be addressed. I assume my coding is very child like so please let me know if things should be formatted differently than what I have chosen. I am reading a ton of resource material and that's progressing well, but because of the size of these files and the time that its going to take to process them I was hoping to lean on your expertise to make sure its not horribly less efficient than it should be. I just wanted to get some guidance before I continued on.

Here is what I have so far, if you have any questions please let me know, and thanks in advance!!

**NOTE** Delete page sub routine is where I stopped so its currently commented out. I have to use it to clean up the blank page that is created by making the files initially. I tried not adding a page get a non-initialized error if it makes a blank pdf file.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

use CAM::PDF;
use PDF::API2;


#Define initial directory
my $dir = "C:\\Users\\user name\\Desktop\\fpb uluro\\";

#Open data folder in directory, pull file names into an array, then cl
+ose directory
opendir(my $dh, $dir."data2") || die "can't opendir $dir"."data2: $!";
my @files = grep {!/^\./ && -f "$dir"."data2/$_" } readdir($dh);
closedir $dh;

#Create the group files to be used for sorting and appending
create_pdf_files();

my $pdf = "";
my $prev_group = "";
my $count = 0;

while (@files) {
    
    #Increment counter and keep cleaner window for in progress display
    $count++;
    system $^O eq 'MSWin32' ? 'cls' : 'clear';
    print "Processing Record #$count. $files[0]\n";
    
    #Grab the next file in the directory and get page count
    my $append_pdf = shift(@files);
    my $group = get_page_cnt($append_pdf);
        
    #Load initial group file if just starting
    $pdf = CAM::PDF->new($dir."finished\\".$group) if $count == 1;
    
    #Check to see if page count is the same as previous for sorting
    #If not update current group file and load new one
    if ($group ne $prev_group && $prev_group ne "") {
        $pdf->cleanoutput($dir."finished\\".$prev_group);
        $pdf = CAM::PDF->new($dir."finished\\".$group);
    }
    
    #Update group file for sorting
    $prev_group = $group;
        
    #Load pdf from directory and append to group file
    my $otherpdf = CAM::PDF->new($dir."data2\\".$append_pdf);
    $pdf->appendPDF($otherpdf);
    
    #After the last file is appended make sure to output since there
    #wont be a next group to trigger the output above
    $pdf->cleanoutput($dir."finished\\".$prev_group) if not @files;
}

delete_blank_page();


sub get_page_cnt {
    
    #Open the pdf to be added to the base pdf
    my $pdf_pages = PDF::API2->open($dir."data2\\".$_[0]);
    #Get a page count from the pdf
    my $pdf_page_cnt = $pdf_pages->pages;
    #Close the pdf to remove the structure from memory
    $pdf_pages->end();
    
    #Use the page count of the pdf to determine which base pdf to use
    my $s = $pdf_page_cnt == 1       ? "one_page.pdf"
    : $pdf_page_cnt <  4        ? "two_page.pdf"
          : $pdf_page_cnt <  8        ? "three_to_four_page.pdf"
          : $pdf_page_cnt <  15        ? "five_to_eight_page.pdf"
          :                           "nine_plus_page.pdf";  # default
+...
    
    return $s;
}


sub create_pdf_files {
    
    #Create blank pdf files for sorting pdfs based on page count
    my $create_pdf = PDF::API2->new(-file => $dir."finished\\".'one_pa
+ge.pdf');
    $create_pdf->page();
    $create_pdf->saveas();
    
    $create_pdf = PDF::API2->new(-file => $dir."finished\\".'two_page.
+pdf');
    $create_pdf->page();
    $create_pdf->saveas();
    
    $create_pdf = PDF::API2->new(-file => $dir."finished\\".'three_to_
+four_page.pdf');
    $create_pdf->page();
    $create_pdf->saveas();
    
    $create_pdf = PDF::API2->new(-file => $dir."finished\\".'five_to_e
+ight_page.pdf');
    $create_pdf->page();
    $create_pdf->saveas();
    
    $create_pdf = PDF::API2->new(-file => $dir."finished\\".'nine_plus
+_page.pdf');
    $create_pdf->page();
    $create_pdf->saveas();

    return 1;
}

sub delete_blank_page {
    
    #my $del_pdf = CAM::PDF->new($dir."finished\\one_page.pdf");
    #$del_pdf->deletePage(1);
    #$del_pdf->cleanoutput($dir."finished\\one_page.pdf");
    
    #$del_pdf = CAM::PDF->new($dir."finished\\two_page.pdf");
    #$del_pdf->deletePage(1);

    #$del_pdf = CAM::PDF->new($dir."finished\\three_to_four_page.pdf")
+;
    #$del_pdf->deletePage(1);
    
    #$del_pdf = CAM::PDF->new($dir."finished\\five_to_eight_page.pdf")
+;
    #$del_pdf->deletePage(1);
    
    #$del_pdf = CAM::PDF->new($dir."finished\\nine_plus_page.pdf");
    #$del_pdf->deletePage(1);
    
    return 1;
}
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