Installing PDFTK

on osx

brew install pdftk-java

on linux

sudo apt-get install pdftk

Collating Pages (normal order)

pdftk A=odd.pdf B=even.pdf shuffle A B output collated.pdf

Collating Pages (reversing the order of the even pages)

pdftk A=odd.pdf B=even.pdf shuffle A Bend-1 output collated_pages.pdf

Creating a bash script

  1. Edit the script with VIM or nano, depeding on your preference
vim $HOME/bin/interleave-pdfs.sh
  1. Copy the following text
#!/bin/bash

# Check if the correct number of arguments is provided
if [ "$#" -ne 2 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 <odd_pages_pdf> <even_pages_pdf>"
    exit 1
fi

# Assign input arguments to variables
odd_pdf=$1
even_pdf=$2

# Output file name
output_pdf="interleaved_PFF.pdf"

# Run the pdftk command to shuffle the pages
pdftk A="$odd_pdf" B="$even_pdf" shuffle A Bend-1 output "$output_pdf"

# Check if pdftk command was successful
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "Successfully created $output_pdf"
else
    echo "Failed to create $output_pdf"
    exit 1
fi
  1. Make the file executable
chmod +x $HOME/bin/interlacePDFs.sh