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On a Mac, how can I sort about 2400 jpg according to their creation date (i. e. stat -f %SB) via terminal and convert them in that order into one pdf?

What if one jpg has been created today at 11:10 pm and a second one shortly after within the same minute at 11:10 pm? Are there seconds in the creation date, which can be taken into account?

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  • You can do this easily with zsh (e.g. custom sorting). I don't have access to OSX so cannot post an answer but this should be piece of cake... Commented Aug 5, 2017 at 9:43

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It depends on the filesystem. For example, on my host, I am using the fourth extended filesystem (ext4), and stat reports thusly for files:

$ touch foo; stat foo; rm foo File: 'foo' Size: 0 Blocks: 0 IO Block: 4096 regular empty file Device: fc00h/64512d Inode: 262155 Links: 1 Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--) Uid: ( 1000/ ownerusername) Gid: ( 1000/ ownerusername) Access: 2017-06-21 14:28:16.150323827 -0700 Modify: 2017-06-21 14:28:16.150323827 -0700 Change: 2017-06-21 14:28:16.150323827 -0700 Birth: -

So you can use the last-modified time as create time is something of a misnomer.

find /path/to/images -type f -print0 -name \*.jpg | xargs -0 stat -c "%y|%n" | sort | awk -F'|' '{print $2}'

This somewhat cumbersome construct will give you a list of files in order by last modification time (provided you have no files with | in their names).

Once you have and have reviewed this list, you can use Imagemagick's convert tool to assemble the PDF:

convert <<list of files>> outputfile.pdf

Or, to do it all at once:

convert $(find /path/to/images -type f -print0 -name \*.jpg | xargs -0 stat -c "%y|%n" | sort | awk -F'|' '{print $2}') outputfile.pdf
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  • The OP mentions nothing about parsing exif data, however. Commented Jun 21, 2017 at 21:51
  • DopeGhoti, thank you very much your reply. When I try the above command I get the following error message stat: illegal option -- c. It is true, the picture I have do not have EXIF data. Commented Jun 22, 2017 at 20:17
  • Do you know which filesystem is in question here? stat -c works for me in my tests. Commented Jun 22, 2017 at 20:31
  • I might add that I want to use the above command on a Mac. I did not mentioned it before as I thought it would be irrelevant to the question. The filesystem would be HFS Plus or Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Commented Jun 23, 2017 at 8:04
  • For a Mac, use stat -f "%a|%N". Commented Jun 28, 2017 at 16:05
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A simple command line with ImageMagick convert works for me.

I tested with the following command line (in a directory with 14 png files), and there will be one picture per page in the pdf file.

convert *.png out-parrot.pdf

But there can be problems with some versions of convert

It works as intended with the version of convert in Parrot 4.4

$convert --version Version: ImageMagick 6.9.10-23 Q16 x86_64 20190101 https://imagemagick.org

but it does not work with the version of convert in Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (up to date in February 2019)

$ convert --version Version: ImageMagick 6.9.7-4 Q16 x86_64 20170114 http://www.imagemagick.org

This version is 'not authorized' to write pdf files

$ convert *.png out-ubuntu.pdf convert-im6.q16: not authorized `out-ubuntu.pdf' @ error/constitute.c/WriteImage/1037. 
$ apt-cache policy imagemagick imagemagick: Installed: 8:6.9.7.4+dfsg-16ubuntu6.4 Candidate: 8:6.9.7.4+dfsg-16ubuntu6.4 Version table: *** 8:6.9.7.4+dfsg-16ubuntu6.4 500 500 http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 Packages 500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status 8:6.9.7.4+dfsg-16ubuntu6 500 500 http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages

Via an Ubuntu mailing list I had the following answer (that converting to pdf was turned off because of problems with ImageMagick vulnerabilities)

Is this a bug in ImageMagick convert, specifically for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, or is converting to pdf turned off by intention?

The change was intentional. See https://usn.ubuntu.com/3785-1/

Thanks, Jeremy Bicha

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Install ImageMagick. Assuming the JPG images are in ~/images and the file names don't contain any spaces (nor any of \[*?) and you have a directory ~/combined:

convert -combine -append $(ls -tr ~/images/*.jpg) ~/combined/all.jpg

or

 convert -combine -append $(ls -tr ~/images/*.jpg) ~/combined/all.pdf

If the images are not the same size, you will get warnings. -append combines images top to bottom. Change to +append and images will combine left to right.

Time: Although ls -l shows time down to hour:minute, Linux keeps track of the access, modify, and age/change times down to the nano second I believe. So sorting by ls -tr does account for even fractions of seconds.

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  • 1
    Don't parse ls. Commented Jun 21, 2017 at 21:43
  • Thank you, Deathgrip, for answering. How can I convert the pictures into a single pdf as asked above? Commented Jun 21, 2017 at 21:43
  • @DopeGhoti - huh? the command works fine and I tested it using CentOS 7. Commented Jun 21, 2017 at 21:46
  • It will fail if any of those file names contains [[:space:]]... Commented Jun 21, 2017 at 21:47
  • Trying to parse the output of an ls is an exercise which, while it may seem to work, is a terribly bad habit to get into for many many security-related reasons, which the link included in my answer goes into in great detail. More detail can be found here. Commented Jun 21, 2017 at 21:47

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