troff:tldr:38c22

troff: Format output as a [pdf] file, saving the output to a file.

troff

$ troff -T ${pdf} ${path-to-input-roff} | gropdf > ${path-to-output-pdf}

try on your machine

This command is composed of several components:

troff is a general-purpose text formatting command in Unix-based systems. It is used to format documents written in the roff language. Roff is a text formatting language used to create typeset documents.
-T ${pdf} is an argument passed to the troff command specifying the output format. In this case, the output will be in PDF format.
${path-to-input-roff} represents the path to the input roff file. This is the file that will be processed and formatted by troff command.
| is a pipe operator used to redirect the output of one command as the input to another command. In this case, it is used to pass the formatted roff output from troff to the next command.
gropdf is a command that takes the input from the previous command and converts it to PDF format.
> ${path-to-output-pdf} specifies the path to the output PDF file. The > symbol redirects the output of the preceding command to the specified file.

In summary, this command takes a roff input file, formats it using the troff command, converts the formatted output to PDF using gropdf, and saves the resulting PDF file to the specified output path.

This explanation was created by an AI. In most cases those are correct. But please always be careful and never run a command you are not sure if it is safe.

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