Read doc/docx in Linux

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: Read doc/docx in Linux by fod (Friar) on Jul 15, 2010 at 01:49 UTC
Text::Extract::Word will do that (for .doc files anyway) but you'll have to convert the windows newlines to unix ones.Maybe something like: `perl -M'Text::Extract::Word q(get_all_text)' -e 'print get_all_text(q(document.doc))' \| dos2unix \| less` if you just want a quick look at it. update: you might find these nodes helpful re docx: using Perl to generate docx file docx and Perl	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Read doc/docx in Linux by TedPride (Priest) on Jul 15, 2010 at 02:57 UTC
There's a command-line utility called catdoc which does that supposedly, haven't tried it myself, however. It might help to tell us WHY you need the files converted, this would let us know whether it's something you need to do on an ongoing basis or something you could just do once using software (often the simpler solution).	[reply]
Re: Read doc/docx in Linux by philipbailey (Curate) on Jul 15, 2010 at 14:22 UTC
I have used antiword successfully in the past for reading the text of Word files at the command line. It doesn't seem to be actively maintained any more, though. I also notice that AbiWord has a command line option for converting Word to other formats. You could of course use the full GUI version of AbiWord, or indeed OpenOffice. (Update) I realise of course that none of my answer directly answers the question of reading these files in Perl, but in practice the command line possibilities mentioned are often a practical way to go.	[reply]