pdf to text

[Steve Holden]

tubby wrote:
> Dieter Deyke wrote:
>>>     sout = os.popen('pdftotext "%s" - ' %f)
> 
>> Your program above should read:
>>
>>    sout = os.popen('pdftotext "%s" - ' % (f,))
> 
> What is the significance of doing it this way?

It's actually just nit-picking - as long as you know f is never going to 
  be a tuple then it's perfectly acceptable to use a single value as the 
right-hand operand.

Of course, if f ever *is* a tuple (with more than one element) then you 
will get an error:

  >>> for f in ['string',
                ('one-element tuple', ),
                ("two-element", "tuple")]:
  ...   print 'Nit: pdftotext "%s" - ' % (f,)
  ...   print 'You: pdftotext "%s" - ' %f
  ...
Nit: pdftotext "string" -
You: pdftotext "string" -
Nit: pdftotext "('one-element tuple',)" -
You: pdftotext "one-element tuple" -
Nit: pdftotext "('two-element', 'tuple')" -
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<stdin>", line 3, in <module>
TypeError: not all arguments converted during string formatting
  >>>

So there is potentially some value to it. But we often don't bother.

regards
  Steve
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