PS2ASCII(1) Ghostscript Tools PS2ASCII(1)

# [NAME](#NAME)

ps2ascii - Ghostscript translator from PostScript or PDF to text

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

**ps2ascii** \[ *input.ps* \[ *output.txt* ] ]  
**ps2ascii** *input.pdf* \[ *output.txt* ]

# [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION)

**ps2ascii** uses [**gs**(1)](/man/os/ghostscript/gs.1) to extract text from **PostScript**(tm) or Adobe **Portable Document Format** (PDF) files. If no files are specified on the command line, **gs** reads from standard input. If no output file is specified, the ASCII text is written to standard output.

The old **ps2ascii.ps** program was deprecated and removed some years ago, the scripts now use the **txtwrite** device to extract text from the input. This does a generally better job than the old PostScript program and can extract Unicode not just ASCII. However it no longer supports the **COMPLEX** feature.

# [SEE ALSO](#SEE_ALSO)

Further documentation on the txtwrite device can be found at https://ghostscript.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Devices.html#text-output

# [VERSION](#VERSION)

This document was last revised for Ghostscript version 10.04.0.

# [AUTHOR](#AUTHOR)

Artifex Software, Inc. are the primary maintainers of Ghostscript. David M. Jones <dmjones@theory.lcs.mit.edu> made substantial improvements to **ps2ascii**.

18 Sept 2024 10.04.0

---

Document: ps2ascii(1) from ghostscript 10.08.0-r1 (Chainguard OS)
Source: https://github.com/ArtifexSoftware/ghostpdl