Get the number of pages in a PDF document

Question

This question is for referencing and comparing. The solution is the accepted answer below.

Many hours have I searched for a fast and easy, but mostly a

Answer 1

if you can't install any additional packages, you can use this simple one-liner:

foundPages=$(strings < $PDF_FILE | sed -n 's|.*Count -\{0,1\}\([0-9]\{1,\}\).*|\1|p' | sort -rn | head -n 1)