Execute external bash file

Question

This is a follow up to Get write18 to execute after file parsing

---

With the code

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\usepackage{graphicx,grffile}

\newcommand{\filename}{}
\newcommand{\croppedfilename}{}

\makeatletter
\newcommand{\includecroppedgraphics}[1]{%
  \filename@parse{#1}%
  \edef\croppedfilename{\filename@area\filename@base.cropped.\filename@ext}%
  \immediate\write18{pdfcrop #1 \croppedfilename}%
  \fbox{\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{\croppedfilename}}%
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\includecroppedgraphics{mypath/myimage.pdf}

\end{document}

I tried to crop a PDF. This did not work for my mutli-page PDF. What did work was the script

#!/bin/bash

temdirname="./croppedpages"

mkdir "$temdirname"
pdftk "$1" burst output "$temdirname"/Page_%03d.pdf

while read -d $'\0' pdfpage ; do
    krop --go --autotrim -o "$pdfpage" "$pdfpage"
done < <(find "$temdirname" -print0)

pdftk "$temdirname"/*.pdf output "$2"
rm -R "$temdirname"

that I wrote based on

• https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/pdftk/
• http://arminstraub.com/software/krop

But it only works so far from the command line. Now I want to include it into the LaTeX script, but the call does not work. I thought I could simply change

\immediate\write18{pdfcrop #1 \croppedfilename}%

to

\immediate\write18{splitcropmerge.sh #1 \croppedfilename}%

In the log it says

runsystem(splitcropmerge.sh Pakete-Uebersicht/Pakete-Uebersicht.pdf Pakete-Uebe rsicht/Pakete-Uebersicht.cropped.pdf)...executed.

LaTeX Warning: File `Pakete-Uebersicht/Pakete-Uebersicht.cropped.pdf' not found on input line 187.

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Krop was installed from package from arminstraub.com/downloads/krop/krop_0.5.0-1_all.deb according to https://www.linuxbabe.com/ubuntu/krop-debian-8-ubuntu-16-04-pdf-crop-tool with

sudo dpkg -i krop_0.5.0-1_all.deb

Answer 1

Disclaimer: I tested your code after commenting the while loop that you use krop.

What is inside the \write18 command is executed exactly like if you typed it in the command prompt. If you execute:

splitcropmerge.sh mypath/myimage.pdf mypath/myimage.cropped.pdf

you'll get an error from the shell. If, on the other hand, you run:

bash splitcropmerge.sh mypath/myimage.pdf mypath/myimage.cropped.pdf

it will work (if the files exist, of course).

So do the same in the line with the \write18:

\immediate\write18{bash splitcropmerge.sh #1 \croppedfilename}%

As noted by @RobtAll, LuaLaTeX users might need to \usepackage{shellesc}. LuaLaTeX (0.87 onwards) doesn't have the same output streams that TeX had, so 18 can be any file. The package shellesc provides the \ShellEscape macro to replace TeX's \write18:

\ShellEscape{bash splitcropmerge.sh #1 \croppedfilename}%