Ubuntu Multimedia :: Batch Extraction Of Subtitles From Mkv Files?

I have recently been tasked to extract the subtitles from a lot of mkv files. Hundreds of them, maybe even more than a thousand. To do this, I modified a script I found online:

#!/bin/bash
IFS="|"
if test -z $1; then

[Code].....

So in the above example the subtitle is actually in track number one and my script would be borked for that particular file. Is there a way to integrate mkvinfo into the script and parse it to see what track should be extracted? Like, read it line-by-line and change the value of some #TRACKNO variable everytime a string like "| + Track number:" appears, and stop when a string like "| + Track type: subtitles" appears? Maybe even skip doing anything if there aren't any subtitles.

PS: I actually prefer SRT subtitles to ***. If there was some command line tool I could use to convert the resulting *** file to SRT I would be much obliged.