using foolabs' pdfinfo for extracting the creation date from PDF files

Xpdf: Ports & Tools

They don't list pdfinfo there, but it is a part of their open source tool set. It's a companion tool to xpdf and pdftohtml.

I like to use the creation date (or last modification date) of (external) documents as the leading part of their file names on my computers.

I use pdfinfo for extracting CreationDate and ModDate from PDF files:

$ pdfinfo …
$ pdfinfo -rawdates …

Of course I like the raw dates better for this purpose than the "human readable" ones.
BTW: The raw date look a little like they are UCT or GMT, but they apparently aren't.

So far I have not created a wrapper script around it, as I am not really using this utility often enough – but sooner or later …