# OCR in ruby

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ocr-in-ruby/89086>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 17, 2007, 3:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ocr-in-ruby/89086 "2007-03-17T03:06:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wyrosdick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/a88e57/32.png) [@wyrosdick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/wyrosdick)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2007, 3:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ocr-in-ruby/89086/1 "2007-03-17T03:06:17Z")

</div>

does anyone know of an OCR library in ruby or one that can be called  
from command line so I can integrate it with a ruby script?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wyrosdick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/a88e57/32.png) [@wyrosdick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/wyrosdick)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2007, 7:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ocr-in-ruby/89086/2 "2007-03-17T07:35:33Z")

</div>

“wyrosdick” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) writes:

> does anyone know of an OCR library in ruby or one that can be called  
> from command line so I can integrate it with a ruby script?

I don’t know of a specific ruby library to do this. However, there is a  
GNU OCR  
project - you could probably bind to its library and use that? It also  
has a  
command line utility that can take input from stdin and send text output  
to  
stdout - possibly you could try using that to see if the genral  
principal  
works.

Tim

P.S. from memory its called gocr

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wyrosdick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/a88e57/32.png) [@wyrosdick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/wyrosdick)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2007, 10:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ocr-in-ruby/89086/3 "2007-03-17T22:21:04Z")

</div>

On Mar 17, 1:34 am, Tim X [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Tim
> 
> ## P.S. from memory its called gocr
> 
> tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

that worked beautifully … I use imagemagick to convert the image to  
a pgm file then use `gocr -i file.pgm` to get the ocr text from the  
command line tool inside of ruby.

thanks  
Ben