Below is a  pdfselect script that will extract pages from a pdf file and save the result in one or multiple pdf files depending on your wishes. You can use in two ways

1. Save the script in a file named pdfselect.csh (or any other name you like), then, if a pdf file file.pdf is in the same folder as pdfselect.csh, issue in the terminal (same directory) the command

csh pdfselect.csh 3:5,7,9,12:20 3:9 file  (important: omit the suffix .pdf)

The result will be two files file-1.pdf and file-2.pdf.  file-1.pdf will contain the pages 3-5, 7, 9 and 12-20, while file-2.pdf will contain the pages 3-9.

The pages and the filename should be given as a list, where filename is the last item in the list. The items in the list are separated by spaces and each item can be of the form
x,y,z,a:b,... (no spaces in between!) or the conditions odd resp. even could be specified.

2. Save the script in a file named pdfselect in the directory ~/local/bin (create the directories if they don't exist yet). This is the directory for your personal binaries - at least it is under my settings; before 10.2 it had been ~/bin, but this changed with OS 10.2, again with the caveat "on my machine"; I am no unix expert.

It is important that the file has to be saved by an application (I use BBEdit) and not copied from another directory.

Then make the script executable by issuing the command

chmod ogu+x ~/local/bin/pdfselect

in the terminal. Restart the terminal or do a rehash, then, whenever you want to apply pdfselect to file.pdf issue the command in the terminal (we use the example above)

pdfselect 3:5,7,9,12:20  3:9 file  (if you are in the file's directory, or otherwise, an absolute or relative path dir/file)

Claus

#!/bin/csh
## This is a csh script, invoke it via csh pdfselect.csh 
# pdfselect.csh
# pdfselect
#
# Enter a list containing pages or page ranges x:y,a,b,odd a:b z filename
# The last item in the list has to be the filename without suffix .pdf
# The resulting selections will be named filename-i.pdf, where 1<=i< length of list
# Claus Gerhardt
##


@ i=1 
 while ($#>1) 
@ j=$#
 texexec  --pdfselect --batch  --silent --selection="$1" --result="$argv[$j]-$i.pdf" "$argv[$j].pdf" && rm -f "$argv[$j]-$i.tui" && rm -f "$argv[$j]-$i.tmp"   && rm -f "texexec.tex" && rm -f "texexec.tmp" && rm -f "texexec.tui" && rm -f "mprun.mp" rm -f "mpgraph.mp" && rm -f "$argv[$j]-$i.log"
@ i++ 
 shift
end