curveto
Re:What is the smallest possible valid PDF?
on Friday March 20, 2020 @12:25PM (#22638857)
Technically, the %PDF doesn't have to occur at byte 0. But, like many others inferred, that pushes onward toward real world structure (vs. an academically correct but useless PDF).
If you want a fully covered example it'll need a trailer, xref and at least one obj reference. ...and there are TWO flavors of those (linearized and not). ...and flate coded and not.
So, for a test harness you'd actually want a collection of small files.