Ghostscript does not report PDF error

Question

I have a corrupted pdf file and want to know, if ghostscript will recognize it.
With following statement, I tried to configure it out, if pdf is corrupt or not:

 gs \
       -o /dev/null \
       -sDEVICE=nullpage \
        /path/to/corrupt.pdf

The statement echo $? return always 0. I can't even open the pdf file with acrobat reader.
Why gs does not recognize it? Or is there an alternativ to ghostscript?

Does gs print any errors? Can you view it when you leave out -o ... -sDEVICE=... ? Are there any (orhter) errors or a return code then? What will file /path/to/corrupt.pdf say? If you're lucky enough, it is so corrupt that it won't be even recognizable as pdf. — Stefan Hegny
– Stefan Hegny, Commented Aug 31, 2016 at 15:15

KenS · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-31 15:14:09Z

1

Ghostscript, like Acrobat, attempts to ignore errors in PDF files.

Why ? Because if we don't people send us their crappy broken PDF files and say 'But Acrobat can open it'.....

If you specify -dPDFSTOPONERROR then Ghostscript will instead throw an error on a large (but by no means exhaustive) range of broken PDF files.

Note that the Ghostscript exit code does not ordinarily tell you if a PostScript (or in fact PDF) error occurred, the interpreter tells you that on the back channel. Ghostscript exit codes usually only tell you when something catastrophic happened to the interpreter (eg it ran out of memory).

Ghostscript is not a PDF validation tool.

answered Aug 31, 2016 at 15:14

KenS

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2 Comments

softshipper Over a year ago

do you know any pdf validation tool?

KenS Over a year ago

Its off-topic for Stack Overflow because that isn't a programming question. However a Google search of 'PDF validation tool' turned up several possibilities.

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