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I want to create a thunar custom action that lets me right-click a PDF and then select "split PDF" to split it into individual pages. The command to do this is:

$ pdfseparate mypdf.pdf mypdf-%d.pdf

Which will create a new PDF for each page, called mypdf-1.pdf, mypdf-2.pdf, etc. %d is replaced by the pdfseparate command with a page number as per the man page:

SYNOPSIS pdfseparate [options] PDF-file PDF-page-pattern 
PDF-page-pattern should contain %d (or any variant respecting printf format), since %d is replaced by the page number.

Thunar custom actions interpolate any %n as the selected file any %d with the directory the file is in. So if I try to replicate the above command, replacing mypdf.pdf with %n, it looks like this:

pdfseparate "%n" "$(basename "%n" .pdf)-%d.pdf"

However, then thunar will replace the %d with the file's directory. How can I escape the %d so it will be passed on to pdfseparate verbatim?

pdfseparate does not appear to have an option to use a different variable than %d but it does say it accepts "any variant respecting printf format". I'm not sure what that means... I tried %s and it didn't work.

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    In printf-like tools, you can often use %% for a literal %, so try something like pdfseparate "%n" "$(basename "%n" .pdf)-%%d.pdf", that might escape the % in %d and pass it as is to pdfseparate. Does that work? Commented Jan 18, 2023 at 17:44
  • @terdon Yes, post it as an answer for credit. The "%n"s must be unquoted though or the quotes are interpreted as part of the filename. Thunar must be interpreting the %n literally because I tested it unquoted on files with spaces in the name and it worked. Commented Jan 19, 2023 at 16:52

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In printf-like tools, you can often use %% for a literal %. For example, in the man page of the printf found in the standard C library (see man 3 printf), you will see:

 % A '%' is written. No argument is converted. The complete conversion specification is '%%'.

So, to escape the % and have it treated as a literal %, just use %%. In your case, that means the command you want to give to thunar is:

pdfseparate %n "$(basename %n .pdf)-%%d.pdf"
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  • Good, however, when I tested with the \"s, the output files got quotes in the filenames as in "myfile"-1.pdf. Commented Jan 19, 2023 at 17:07
  • @ki9 hmm. The thing is without the quotes, it will almost certainly break if you try it on a file whose name contains spaces. I don't know exactly how it should be quoted without trying, but some quoting in the basename command will be needed. I'll remove them now, but if you try with a file named something like foo bar.pdf, let me know how it goes! Commented Jan 19, 2023 at 17:17
  • I did test it on a file with spaces and it does work as you have it now, creating files like foo bar-1.pdf. Like I said, I guess thunar is already treating %n like a single parameter as if it were already "%n". Commented Jan 19, 2023 at 17:25
  • @ki9 OK, great. You must be right and it is passing the %n quoted. I thought the %n was used and expanded by pdfseparate but if it isn't, then great! Commented Jan 19, 2023 at 17:27

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