TypeError: Cannot read property 'clone' of undefined

Hi, When trying to copy a specific PDF, i have the error : TypeError: Cannot read property 'clone' of undefined

Here is a not working example : https://runkit.com/gautiert/5d81e279596dfc0015e16a7c

Probably related to #186

[Hopding]

I was able to fix the problem in #200. It will go out in the next pdf-lib release.

Incase, you’re interested, the problem was due to a missing newline. The PDF states that:

The last line of the file shall contain only the end-of-file marker, %%EOF.

This seems pretty clear cut. But it becomes ambiguous when you start dealing with incremental update sections (the file you shared here has one of these):

Each trailer shall be terminated by its own end-of-file (%%EOF) marker.

But it doesn’t really state whether the previous %%EOF marker should be followed by a newline before the update section’s content begins. All examples in the spec do have a newline. And every other updated PDF I’ve come across does as well.

However, the PDF you shared here does not follow this convention:

285 | 17201^M
286 | %%EOF28 0 obj^M
287 | <<^M

Notice line 286. That’s what caused the issue. pdf-lib’s parser was implicitly expecting a newline after the %%EOF. And when it didn’t find one, that caused it to enter error recovery mode and skip object 28.

Gotta love the PDF spec’s ambiguity and lack of clarity 🙄. Anyhow, it’s fixed now 👍

[GautierT]

Thanks a lot @Hopding !! Bravo for this awesome lib ! 👏