How to add page numbers to Postscript/PDF

Question

If you\'ve got a large document (500 pages+) in Postscript and want to add page numbers, does anyone know how to do this?

Answer 1

I used to add page numbers to my pdf using latex like in the accepted answer.

Now I found an easier way: Use enscript to create empty pages with a header containing the page number, and then use pdftk with the multistamp option to put the header on your file.

This bash script expects the pdf file as it's only parameter:

#!/bin/bash
input="$1"
output="${1%.pdf}-header.pdf"
pagenum=$(pdftk "$input" dump_data | grep "NumberOfPages" | cut -d":" -f2)
enscript -L1 --header='||Page $% of $=' --output - < <(for i in $(seq "$pagenum"); do echo; done) | ps2pdf - | pdftk "$input" multistamp - output $output