G'day BernieC,

Here's a quick comparison of PDF-related modules.

PDF

As ++marto states, 23 years old and Active bugs. Probably abandonware; I'd suggest avoiding this one.

CAM::PDF

Suggested by AM. This is 10 years old; has a lot of bugs; and probably abandonware. See "CAM::PDF Error: Expected identifier label" for example problem and discussion.

PDF::API2

I'm most familiar with this one. It was last updated just 6 months ago. I did a quick test for the page count you were trying (code mostly just copied from the SYNOPSIS). I'm not sure what else you might want; perhaps "METADATA METHODS" is of interest.

$ perl -E '
    use strict;
    use warnings;
    use PDF::API2;
    my $pdf = PDF::API2->new();
    my $font = $pdf->font("Helvetica-Bold");
    for my $p (1 .. 10) {
        my $page = $pdf->page();
        my $text = $page->text();
        $text->font($font, 20);
        $text->position(200, 700);
        $text->text("Page: $p");
    }
    $pdf->save("test.pdf");
'

$ file test.pdf
test.pdf: PDF document, version 1.4, 10 pages

$ perl -E '
    use strict;
    use warnings;
    use PDF::API2;
    my $pdf = PDF::API2->open("test.pdf");
    say "Page count: ", $pdf->page_count();
'
Page count: 10
[download]

PDF::Builder

Suggested by marto. It was last updated just 4 months ago. I hadn't encountered this one previously. It's SYNOPSIS is almost identical to PDF::API2's. It may be a branch of PDF::API2 that's intended to provide improvements or enhancements; it mentions PDF::API2 a few times by way of comparison; I didn't see anything regarding a branch but I also didn't study the docs in detail. It has "METADATA METHODS" too.

See its README.md for possible hurdles to using this, such as requiring Perl v5.24; having said that, it installed first time for me using the cpan utility (I have Perl v5.36.0).

Given the similarities, I just repeated the test I did previously, replacing API2 with Builder and test.pdf with test2.pdf. At least in this respect, PDF::API2 and PDF::Builder function identically. If anyone has other information re PDF::API2 vs. PDF::Builder, please add comments.

$ perl -E '
    use strict;
    use warnings;
    use PDF::Builder;
    my $pdf = PDF::Builder->new();
    my $font = $pdf->font("Helvetica-Bold");
    for my $p (1 .. 10) {
        my $page = $pdf->page();
        my $text = $page->text();
        $text->font($font, 20);
        $text->position(200, 700);
        $text->text("Page: $p");
    }
    $pdf->save("test2.pdf");
'

$ file test2.pdf
test2.pdf: PDF document, version 1.4, 10 pages

perl -E '
    use strict;
    use warnings;
    use PDF::Builder;
    my $pdf = PDF::Builder->open("test2.pdf");
    say "Page count: ", $pdf->page_count();
'
Page count: 10
[download]

ken@titan ~/tmp/pm_11152014_pdf
$ ls -l
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 ken None 4272 May  7 00:50 test.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 ken None 7024 May  7 01:05 test2.pdf
[download]