<p>How would I be able to programmatically search and replace some text in a large number of PDF files?  I would like to remove a URL that has been added to a set of files.  I have been able to remove the link using javascript under Batch Processing in Adobe Pro, but the link text remains.  I have seen recommendations to use text touchup, which works manually, but I don't want to modify 1300 files manually.</p>

Finding text in a PDF can be inherently hard because of the graphical nature of the document format -- the letters you are searching for may not be contiguous in the file.  That said,
CAM::PDF
has some search-replace capabilities and heuristics.  Give
changepagestring.pl
a try and see if it works on your PDFs.
To install:
```
```
$ cpan install CAM::PDF
 # start a new terminal if this is your first cpan module
 $ changepagestring.pl input.pdf oldtext newtext output.pdf
```
```