NAME
bibclean - prettyprint and syntax check BibTeX and Scribe bibliography
data base files
SYNOPSIS
bibclean [ -author ] [ -error-log filename ] [ -help ] [ -? ]
[ -init-file filename ] [ -long-field fieldname ]
[ -max-width nnn ] [ -[no-]align-equals ]
[ -[no-]check-values ] [ -[no-]delete-empty-values ]
[ -[no-]file-position ] [ -[no-]fix-font-changes ]
[ -[no-]fix-initials ] [ -[no-]fix-names ]
[ -[no-]German-style ] [ -[no-]keep-linebreaks ]
[ -[no-]keep-parbreaks ] [ -[no-]keep-preamble-spaces ]
[ -[no-]keep-spaces ] [ -[no-]keep-string-spaces ]
[ -[no-]parbreaks ] [ -[no-]prettyprint ]
[ -[no-]print-patterns ] [ -[no-]read-init-files ]
[ -[no-]remove-OPT-prefixes ] [ -[no-]scribe ]
[ -[no-]trace-file-opening ] [ -[no-]warnings ] [ -version ]
( <infile | bibfile1 bibfile2 bibfile3 ... ) >outfile
All options can be abbreviated to a unique leading prefix.
An explicit file name of ‘‘-’’ represents standard input; it is assumed
if no input files are specified.
DESCRIPTION
bibclean prettyprints input BibTeX files to stdout, and checks the
brace balance and bibliography entry syntax as well. It can be used to
detect problems in BibTeX files that sometimes confuse even BibTeX
itself, and importantly, can be used to normalize the appearance of
collections of BibTeX files.
Here is a summary of the formatting actions:
· BibTeX items are formatted into a consistent structure with one
field = "value" pair per line, and the initial @ and trailing right
brace in column 1.
· Tabs are expanded into blank strings; their use is discouraged
because they inhibit portability, and can suffer corruption in
electronic mail.
· Long string values are split at a blank and continued onto the next
line with leading indentation.
· A single blank line separates adjacent bibliography entries.
· Text outside BibTeX entries is passed through verbatim.
· Outer parentheses around entries are converted to braces.
· Personal names in author and editor field values are normalized to
the form ‘‘P. D. Q. Bach’’, from ‘‘P.D.Q. Bach’’ and ‘‘Bach,
P.D.Q.’’.
· Hyphen sequences in page numbers are converted to en-dashes.
· Month values are converted to standard BibTeX string abbreviations.
· In titles, sequences of upper-case characters at brace level zero
are braced to protect them from being converted to lower-case
letters by some bibliography styles.
· CODEN, ISBN (International Standard Book Number) and ISSN
(International Standard Serial Number) entry values are examined to
verify the checksums of each listed number, and correct ISBN
hyphenation is automatically supplied.
The standardized format of the output of bibclean facilitates the later
application of simple filters, such as bibcheck(1), bibdup(1),
bibextract(1), bibindex(1), bibjoin(1), biblabel(1), biblook(1),
biborder(1), bibsort(1), citefind(1), and citetags(1), to process the
text, and also is the one expected by the GNU Emacs BibTeX support
functions.
OPTIONS
Command-line switches may be abbreviated to a unique leading prefix,
and letter case is not significant. All options are parsed before any
input bibliography files are read, no matter what their order on the
command line. Options that correspond to a yes/no setting of a flag
have a form with a prefix "no-" to set the flag to no. For such
options, the last setting determines the flag value used. This is
significant when options are also specified in initialization files
(see the INITIALIZATION FILES manual section).
The leading hyphen that distinguishes an option from a filename may be
doubled, for compatibility with GNU and POSIX conventions. Thus,
-author and --author are equivalent.
To avoid confusion with options, if a filename begins with a hyphen, it
must be disguised by a leading absolute or relative directory path,
e.g., /tmp/-foo.bib or ./-foo.bib.
-author Display an author credit on the standard error unit, stderr,
and then exit with a success return code. Sometimes an
executable program is separated from its documentation and
source code; this option provides a way to recover from that.
-error-log filename
Redirect stderr to the indicated file, which will then
contain all of the error and warning messages. This option
is provided for those systems that have difficulty
redirecting stderr.
-help or -?
Display a help message on stderr, giving a usage description,
similar to this section of the manual pages, and then exit
with a success return code.
-init-file filename
Provide an explicit value pattern initialization file. It
will be processed after any system-wide and job-wide
initialization files, and may override them. It in turn may
be overridden by a subsequent file-specific initialization
file. For further details, see the INITIALIZATION FILES
manual section.
-long-field fieldname
Suppress warnings that field named fieldname have lenghts
exceeding the standard BibTeX limits. NB! This is a Debian-
specific extension!
-max-width nnn
bibclean normally limits output line widths to 72 characters,
and in the interests of consistency, that value should not be
changed. Occasionally, special-purpose applications may
require different maximum line widths, so this option
provides that capability. The number following the option
name can be specified in decimal, octal (starting with 0), or
hexadecimal (starting with 0x). A zero or negative value is
interpreted to mean unlimited, so -max-width 0 can be used to
ensure that each field/value pair appears on a single line.
When -no-prettyprint requests bibclean to act as a lexical
analyzer, the default line width is unlimited, unless
overridden by this option.
When bibclean is prettyprinting, line wrapping will be done
only at a space. Consequently, a long non-blank character
sequence may result in the output exceeding the requested
line width.
When bibclean is lexing, line wrapping is done by inserting a
backslash-newline pair when the specified maximum is reached,
so no line length will ever exceed the maximum.
-[no-]align-equals
With the positive form, align the equals sign in key/value
assignments at the same column, separated by a single space
from the value string. Otherwise, the equals sign follows
the key, separated by a single space. Default: no.
-[no-]check-values
With the positive form, apply heuristic pattern matching to
field values in order to detect possible errors (e.g., ‘‘year
= "192"’’ instead of ‘‘year = "1992"’’), and issue warnings
when unexpected patterns are found.
This checking is usually beneficial, but if it produces too
many bogus warnings for a particular bibliography file, you
can disable it with the negative form of this option.
Default: yes.
-[no-]delete-empty-values
With the positive form, remove all field/value pairs for
which the value is an empty string. This is helpful in
cleaning up bibliographies generated from text editor
templates. Compare this option with -[no-]remove-OPT-prefixes
described below. Default: no.
-[no-]file-position
With the positive form, give detailed file position
information in warning and error messages. Default: no.
-[no-]fix-font-changes
With the positive form, supply an additional brace level
around font changes in titles to protect against downcasing
by some BibTeX styles. Font changes that already have more
than one level of braces are not modified.
For example, if a title contains the Latin phrase {\em
Dictyostelium Discoideum} or {\em {D}ictyostelium
{D}iscoideum}, then downcasing will incorrectly convert the
phrase to lower-case letters. Most BibTeX users are
surprised that bracing the initial letters does not prevent
the downcase action. The correct coding is {{\em
Dictyostelium Discoideum}}. However, there are also
legitimate cases where an extra level of bracing wrongly
protects from downcasing. Consequently, bibclean will
normally not supply an extra level of braces, but if you have
a bibliography where the extra braces are routinely missing,
you can use this option to supply them.
If you think that you need this option, it is strongly
recommended that you apply bibclean to your bibliography file
with and without -fix-font-changes, then compare the two
output files to ensure that extra braces are not being
supplied in titles where they should not be present. You
will have to decide which of the two output files is the
better choice, then repair the incorrect title bracing by
hand.
Since font changes in titles are uncommon, except for cases
of the type which this option is designed to correct, it
should do more good than harm. Default: no.
-[no-]fix-initials
With the positive form, insert a space after a period
following author initials. Default: yes.
-[no-]fix-names
With the positive form, reorder author and editor name lists
to remove commas at brace level zero, placing first names or
initials before last names. Default: yes.
-[no-]German-style
With the positive form, interpret quote characters ["] inside
braced value strings at brace level 1 according to the
conventions of the TeX style file german.sty, which overloads
quote to simplify input and representation of German umlaut
accents, sharp-s (es-zet), ligature separators, invisible
hyphens, raised/lowered quotes, French guillemets, and
discretionary hyphens. Recognized character combinations
will be braced to prevent BibTeX from interpreting the quote
as a string delimiter.
Quoted strings receive no special handling from this option,
and since German nouns in titles must anyway be protected
from the downcasing operation of most BibTeX bibliography
styles, German value strings that use the overloaded quote
character can always be entered in the form "{...}", without
the need to specify this option at all.
Default: no.
-[no-]keep-linebreaks
Normally, line breaks inside value strings are collapsed into
a single space, so that long value strings can later be
broken to provide lines of reasonable length.
With the positive form, linebreaks are preserved in value
strings. If -max-width is set to zero, this preserves the
original line breaks. Spacing outside value strings remains
under bibclean’s control, and is not affected by this option.
Default: no.
-[no-]keep-parbreaks
With the positive form, preserve paragraph breaks (either
formfeeds, or lines containing only spaces) in value strings.
Normally, paragraph breaks are collapsed into a single space.
Spacing outside value strings remains under bibclean’s
control, and is not affected by this option. Default: no.
-[no-]keep-preamble-spaces
With the positive form, preserve all whitespace in
@Preamble{...} entries. Default: no.
-[no-]keep-spaces
With the positive form, preserve all spaces in value strings.
Normally, multiple spaces are collapsed into a single space.
This option can be used together with -keep-linebreaks,
-keep-parbreaks, and -max-width 0 to preserve the form of
value strings while still providing syntax and value
checking. Spacing outside value strings remains under
bibclean’s control, and is not affected by this option.
Default: no.
-[no-]keep-string-spaces
With the positive form, preserve all whitespace in
@String{...} entries. Default: no.
-[no-]parbreaks
With the negative form, a paragraph break (either a formfeed,
or a line containing only spaces) is not permitted in value
strings, or between field/value pairs. This may be useful to
quickly trap runaway strings arising from mismatched
delimiters. Default: yes.
-[no-]prettyprint
Normally, bibclean functions as a prettyprinter. However,
with the negative form of this option, it acts as a lexical
analyzer instead, producing a stream of lexical tokens. See
the LEXICAL ANALYSIS manual section for further details.
Default: yes.
-[no-]print-patterns
With the positive form, print the value patterns read from
initialization files as they are added to internal tables.
Use this option to check newly-added patterns, or to see what
patterns are being used.
These patterns are the ones that will be used in checking
value strings for valid syntax, and all of them are specified
in initialization files, rather than hard-coded into the
program. For further details, see the INITIALIZATION FILES
manual section. Default: no.
-[no-]read-init-files
With the negative form, suppress loading of system-, user-,
and file-specific initialization files. Initializations will
come only from those files explicitly given by -init-file
filename options. Default: yes.
-[no-]remove-OPT-prefixes
With the positive form, remove the ‘‘OPT’’ prefix from each
field name where the corresponding value is not an empty
string. The prefix ‘‘OPT’’ must be entirely in upper-case to
be recognized.
This option is for bibliographies generated with the help of
the GNU Emacs BibTeX editing support, which generates
templates with optional fields identified by the ‘‘OPT’’
prefix. Although the function M-x bibtex-remove-OPT normally
bound to the keystrokes C-c C-o does the job, users often
forget, with the result that BibTeX does not recognize the
field name, and ignores the value string. Compare this
option with -[no-]delete-empty-values described above.
Default: no.
-[no-]scribe
With the positive form, accept input syntax conforming to the
Scribe document system. The output will be converted to
conform to BibTeX syntax. See the SCRIBE BIBLIOGRAPHY FORMAT
manual section for further details. Default: no.
-[no-]trace-file-opening
With the positive form, record in the error log file the
names of all files which bibclean attempts to open. Use this
option to identify where initialization files are located.
Default: no.
-[no-]warnings
With the positive form, allow all warning messages. The
negative form is not recommended since it may mask problems
that should be repaired. Default: yes.
-version Display the program version number on stderr, and then exit
with a success return code. This will also include an
indication of who compiled the program, the host name on
which it was compiled, the time of compilation, and the type
of string-value matching code selected, when that information
is available to the compiler.
ERROR RECOVERY AND WARNINGS
When bibclean detects an error, it issues an error message to both
stderr and stdout. That way, the user is clearly notified, and the
output bibliography also contains the message at the point of error.
Error messages begin with a distinctive pair of queries, ??, beginning
in column 1, followed by the input file name and line number. If the
-file-position option was specified, they also contain the input and
output positions of the current file, entry, and value. Each position
includes the file byte number, the line number, and the column number.
In the event of a runaway string argument, the entry and value
positions should precisely pinpoint the erroneous bibliography entry,
and the file positions will indicate where it was detected, which may
be rather later in the files.
Warning messages identify possible problems, and are therefore sent
only to stderr, and not to stdout, so they never appear in the output
file. They are identified by a distinctive pair of percents, %%,
beginning in column 1, and as with error messages, may be followed by
file position messages if the -file-position option was specified.
For convenience, the first line of each error and warning message sent
to stderr is formatted according to the expectations of the GNU Emacs
next-error command. You can invoke bibclean with the Emacs M-x
compile<RET>bibclean filename.bib >filename.new command, then use the
next-error command, normally bound to C-x (that’s a grave, or back,
accent), to move to the location of the error in the input file.
If error messages are ignored, and left in the output bibliography
file, they will precipitate an error when the bibliography is next
processed with BibTeX.
After issuing an error message, bibclean then resynchronizes its input
by copying it verbatim to stdout until a new bibliography entry is
recognized on a line in which the first non-blank character is an at-
sign (@). This ensures that nothing is lost from the input file(s),
allowing corrections to be made in either the input or the output
files. However, if bibclean detects an internal error in its data
structures, it will terminate abruptly without further input or output
processing; this kind of error should never happen, and if it does, it
should be reported immediately to the author of the program. Errors in
initialization files, and running out of dynamic memory, will also
immediately terminate bibclean.
INITIALIZATION FILES
bibclean can be compiled with one of three different types of pattern
matching; the choice is made by the installer at compile time:
· The original version uses explicit hand-coded tests of value-
string syntax.
· The second version uses regular-expression pattern-matching
host library routines together with regular-expression
patterns that come entirely from initialization files.
· The third version uses special patterns that come entirely
from initialization files.
This Debianized version of bibclean uses the third version. However,
command-line options can also be specified in initialization files, no
matter which pattern matching choice was selected.
When bibclean starts, it searches for initialization files, using the
first one of $(HOME)/.bibcleanrc, /usr/share/bibcleanrc, and
/etc/bibcleanrc that exists. Afterwards, it reads the first
.bibcleanrc found in the BIBINPUTS search path. The name .bibcleanrc
can be changed at run time through a setting of the environment
variable BIBCLEANINI. If the name starts with a dot, it will be
stripped when looking in /usr/share and /etc.
Then, when command-line arguments are processed, any additional files
specified by -init-filefilename options are also processed. Finally,
immediately before each named bibliography file is processed, an
attempt is made to process an initialization file with the same name,
but with the extension changed to .ini. The default extension can be
changed by a setting of the environment variable BIBCLEANEXT. This
scheme permits system-wide, user-wide, session-wide, and file-specific
initialization files to be supported.
When input is taken from stdin, there is no file-specific
initialization.
For precise control, the -no-read-init-files option suppresses all
initialization files except those explicitly named by -init-
filefilename options, either on the command line, or in requested
initialization files.
Recursive execution of initialization files with nested -init-file
options is permitted; if the recursion is circular, bibclean will
finally get a non-fatal initialization file open failure after opening
too many files. This terminates further initialization file
processing. As the recursion unwinds, the files are all closed, then
execution proceeds normally.
An initialization file may contain empty lines, comments from percent
to end of line (just like TeX), option switches, and field/pattern or
field/pattern/message assignments. Leading and trailing spaces are
ignored. This is best illustrated by a short example:
% This is a small bibclean initialization file
-init-file /u/math/bib/.bibcleanrc %% departmental patterns
chapter = "\"D\"" %% 23
pages = "\"D--D\"" %% 23--27
volume = "\"D \\an\\d D\"" %% 11 and 12
year = \
"\"dddd, dddd, dddd\"" \
"Multiple years specified." %% 1989, 1990, 1991
-no-fix-names %% do not modify author/editor lists
Long logical lines can be split into multiple physical lines by
breaking at a backslash-newline pair; the backslash-newline pair is
discarded. This processing happens while characters are being read,
before any further interpretation of the input stream.
Each logical line must contain a complete option (and its value, if
any), or a complete field/pattern pair, or a field/pattern/message
triple.
Comments are stripped during the parsing of the field, pattern, and
message values. The comment start symbol is not recognized inside
quoted strings, so it can be freely used in such strings.
Comments on logical lines that were input as multiple physical lines
via the backslash-newline convention must appear on the last physical
line; otherwise, the remaining physical lines will become part of the
comment.
Pattern strings must be enclosed in quotation marks; within such
strings, a backslash starts an escape mechanism that is commonly used
in UNIX software. The recognized escape sequences are:
\a alarm bell (octal 007)
\b backspace (octal 010)
\f formfeed (octal 014)
\n newline (octal 012)
\r carriage return (octal 015)
\t horizontal tab (octal 011)
\v vertical tab (octal 013)
\ooo character number octal ooo (e.g \012 is linefeed). Up to
3 octal digits may be used.
\0xhh character number hexadecimal hh (e.g., \0x0a is
linefeed). xhh may be in either letter case. Any number
of hexadecimal digits may be used.
Backslash followed by any other character produces just that character.
Thus, \% gets a literal percent into a string (preventing its
interpretation as a comment), \" produces a quotation mark, and \\
produces a single backslash.
An ASCII NUL (\0) in a string will terminate it; this is a feature of
the C programming language in which bibclean is implemented.
Field/pattern pairs can be separated by arbitrary space, and
optionally, either an equals sign or colon functioning as an assignment
operator. Thus, the following are equivalent:
pages="\"D--D\""
pages:"\"D--D\""
pages "\"D--D\""
pages = "\"D--D\""
pages : "\"D--D\""
pages "\"D--D\""
Each field name can have an arbitrary number of patterns associated
with it; however, they must be specified in separate field/pattern
assignments.
An empty pattern string causes previously-loaded patterns for that
field name to be forgotten. This feature permits an initialization
file to completely discard patterns from earlier initialization files.
Patterns for value strings are represented in a tiny special-purpose
language that is both convenient and suitable for bibliography value-
string syntax checking. While not as powerful as the language of
regular-expression patterns, its parsing can be portably implemented in
less than 3% of the code in a widely-used regular-expression parser
(the GNU regexp package).
The patterns are represented by the following special characters:
<space> one or more spaces
a exactly one letter
A one or more letters
d exactly one digit
D one or more digits
r exactly one Roman numeral
R one or more Roman numerals (i.e. a Roman number)
w exactly one word (one or more letters and digits)
W one or more space-separated words, beginning and ending
with a word
. one ‘special’ character, one of the characters
<space>!#()*+,-./:;?[]~, a subset of punctuation
characters that are typically used in string values
: one or more ‘special’ characters
X one or more ‘special’-separated words, beginning and
ending with a word
\x exactly one x (x is any character), possibly with an
escape sequence interpretation given earlier
x exactly the character x (x is anything but one of these
pattern characters: aAdDrRwW.:<space>\)
The X pattern character is very powerful, but generally inadvisable,
since it will match almost anything likely to be found in a BibTeX
value string. The reason for providing pattern matching on the value
strings is to uncover possible errors, not mask them.
There is no provision for specifying ranges or repetitions of
characters, but this can usually be done with separate patterns. It is
a good idea to accompany the pattern with a comment showing the kind of
thing it is expected to match. Here is a portion of an initialization
file giving a few of the patterns used to match number value strings:
number = "\"D\"" %% 23
number = "\"A AD\"" %% PN LPS5001
number = "\"A D(D)\"" %% RJ 34(49)
number = "\"A D\"" %% XNSS 288811
number = "\"A D\\.D\"" %% Version 3.20
number = "\"A-A-D-D\"" %% UMIAC-TR-89-11
number = "\"A-A-D\"" %% CS-TR-2189
number = "\"A-A-D\\.D\"" %% CS-TR-21.7
For a bibliography that contains only article entries, this list should
probably be reduced to just the first pattern, so that anything other
than a digit string fails the pattern-match test. This is easily done
by keeping bibliography-specific patterns in a corresponding file with
extension .ini, since that file is read automatically.
You should be sure to use empty pattern strings in this pattern file to
discard patterns from earlier initialization files.
The value strings passed to the pattern matcher contain surrounding
quotes, so the patterns should also. However, you could use a pattern
specification like "\"D" to match an initial digit string followed by
anything else; the omission of the final quotation mark \" in the
pattern allows the match to succeed without checking that the next
character in the value string is a quotation mark.
Because the value strings are intended to be processed by TeX, the
pattern matching ignores braces, and TeX control sequences, together
with any space following those control sequences. Spaces around braces
are preserved. This convention allows the pattern fragment A-AD-D to
match the value string TN-K\slash 27-70, because the value is
implicitly collapsed to TN-K27-70 during the matching operation.
bibclean’s normal action when a string value fails to match any of the
corresponding patterns is to issue a warning message something like
this: "Unexpected value in year = "192". In most cases, that is
sufficient to alert the user to a problem. In some cases, however, it
may be desirable to associate a different message with a particular
pattern. This can be done by supplying a message string following the
pattern string. Format items %% (single percent), %e (entry name), %f
(field name), %k (citation key), and %v (string value) are available to
get current values expanded in the messages. Here is an example:
chapter = "\"D:D\"" "Colon found in ‘‘%f = %v’’" %% 23:2
To be consistent with other messages output by bibclean, the message
string should not end with punctuation.
If you wish to make the message an error, rather than just a warning,
begin it with a query (?), like this:
chapter = "\"D:D\"" "?Colon found in ‘‘%f = %v’’" %% 23:2
The query will not be included in the output message.
Escape sequences are supported in message strings, just as they are in
pattern strings. You can use this to advantage for fancy things, such
as terminal display mode control. If you rewrite the previous example
as
chapter = "\"D:D\"" \
"?\033[7mColon found in ‘‘%f = %v’’\033[0m" %% 23:2
the error message will appear in inverse video on display screens that
support ANSI terminal control sequences. Such practice is not normally
recommended, since it may have undesirable effects on some output
devices. Nevertheless, you may find it useful for restricted
applications.
For some types of bibliography fields, bibclean contains special-
purpose code to supplement or replace the pattern matching:
· CODEN, ISBN and ISSN field values are handled this way
because their validation requires evaluation of checksums
that cannot be expressed by simple patterns; no patterns are
even used in these three cases.
· chapter, number, pages, and volume values are checked only by
pattern matching.
· month values are first checked against the standard BibTeX
month abbreviations, and only if no match is found are
patterns then used.
· year values are first checked against patterns, then if no
match is found, the year numbers are found and converted to
integer values for testing against reasonable bounds.
Values for other fields are checked only against patterns. You can
provide patterns for any field you like, even ones bibclean does not
already know about. New ones are simply added to an internal table
that is searched for each string to be validated.
The special field, key, represents the bibliographic citation key. It
can be given patterns, like any other field. Here is an initialization
file pattern assignment that will match an author name, a colon, an
alphabetic string, and a two-digit year:
key = "A:Add" %% Knuth:TB86
Notice that no quotation marks are included in the pattern, because the
citation keys are not quoted. You can use such patterns to help
enforce uniform naming conventions for citation keys, which is
increasingly important as your bibliography data base grows.
LEXICAL ANALYSIS
When -no-prettyprint is specified, bibclean acts as a lexical analyzer
instead of a prettyprinter, producing output in lines of the form
<token-number><tab><token-name><tab>"<token-value>"
Each output line contains a single complete token, identified by a
small integer number for use by a computer program, a token type name
for human readers, and a string value in quotes.
Special characters in the token value string are represented with
ANSI/ISO Standard C escape sequences, so all characters other than NUL
are representable, and multi-line values can be represented in a single
line.
Here are the token numbers and token type names that can appear in the
output when -prettyprint is specified:
0 UNKNOWN
1 ABBREV
2 AT
3 COMMA
4 COMMENT
5 ENTRY
6 EQUALS
7 FIELD
8 INCLUDE
9 INLINE
10 KEY
11 LBRACE
12 LITERAL
13 NEWLINE
14 PREAMBLE
15 RBRACE
16 SHARP
17 SPACE
18 STRING
19 VALUE
Programs that parse such output should also be prepared for lines
beginning with the warning prefix, %%, or the error prefix, ??, and for
ANSI/ISO Standard C line number directives of the form
# line 273 "texbook1.bib"
which record the line number and file name of the current input file.
If a -max-width nnn command-line option was specified, long output
lines will be wrapped at a backslash-newline pair, and consequently,
software that processes the lexical token stream should be prepared to
collapse such wrapped lines back into single lines.
As an example of the use of -no-prettyprint, the UNIX command pipeline
bibclean -no-prettyprint mylib.bib | \
awk ’$2 == "KEY" {print $3}’ | \
sed -e ’s/"//g’ | \
sort
will extract a sorted list of all citation keys in the file mylib.bib.
A certain amount of processing will have been done on the tokens. In
particular, delimiters equivalent to braces will have been replaced by
braces, and braced strings will have become quoted strings.
The LITERAL token type is used for arbitrary text that bibclean does
not examine further, such as the contents of a @Preamble{...} or a
@Comment{...}.
The UNKNOWN token type should never appear in the output stream. It is
used internally to initialize token type variables.
SCRIBE BIBLIOGRAPHY FORMAT
bibclean’s support for the Scribe bibliography format is based on the
syntax description in the Scribe Introductory User’s Manual, 3rd
Edition, May 1980. Scribe was originally developed by Brian Reid at
Carnegie-Mellon University, and is now marketed by Unilogic, Ltd.
The BibTeX bibliography format was strongly influenced by Scribe, and
indeed, with care, it is possible to share bibliography files between
the two systems. Nevertheless, there are some differences, so here is
a summary of features of the Scribe bibliography file format:
(1) Letter case is not significant in field names and entry names,
but case is preserved in value strings.
(2) In field/value pairs, the field and value may be separated by one
of three characters: =, /, or space. Space may optionally
surround these separators.
(3) Value delimiters are any of these seven pairs: { } [ ] ( )
< > ’ ’ " " ‘ ‘
(4) Value delimiters may not be nested, even though with the first
four delimiter pairs, nested balanced delimiters would be
unambiguous.
(5) Delimiters can be omitted around values that contain only
letters, digits, sharp (#), ampersand (&), period (.), and
percent (%).
(6) Outside of delimited values, a literal at-sign (@) is represented
by doubled at-signs (@@).
(7) Bibliography entries begin with @name, as for BibTeX, but any of
the seven Scribe value delimiter pairs may be used to surround
the values in field/value pairs. As in (4), nested delimiters
are forbidden.
(8) Arbitrary space may separate entry names from the following
delimiters.
(9) @Comment is a special command whose delimited value is discarded.
As in (4), nested delimiters are forbidden.
(10) The special form
@Begin{comment}
...
@End{comment}
permits encapsulating arbitrary text containing any characters or
delimiters, other than ‘‘@End{comment}’’. Any of the seven
delimiter pairs may be used around the word ‘‘comment’’ following
the ‘‘@Begin’’ or ‘‘@End’’; the delimiters in the two cases need
not be the same, and consequently,
‘‘@Begin{comment}’’/‘‘@End{comment}’’ pairs may not be nested.
(11) The key field is required in each bibliography entry.
(12) A backslashed quote in a string will be assumed to be a TeX
accent, and braced appropriately. While such accents do not
conform to Scribe syntax, Scribe-format bibliographies have been
found that appear to be intended for TeX processing.
Because of this loose syntax, bibclean’s normal error detection
heuristics are less effective, and consequently, Scribe mode input is
not the default; it must be explicitly requested.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
BIBCLEANEXT File extension of bibliography-specific initialization
files. Default: .ini.
BIBCLEANINI Name of bibclean initialization files. Default:
.bibcleanrc.
BIBINPUTS Search path for bibclean and BibTeX input files. This is
a colon-separated list of directories that are searched in
order from first to last. It is not an error for a
specified directory to not exist.
FILES
*.bib BibTeX and Scribe bibliography data base files.
*.ini File-specific initialization files.
/usr/share/bibcleanrc, /etc/bibcleanrc
System-wide initialization files.
.bibcleanrc User-specific initialization files.
SEE ALSO
bibcheck(1), bibdup(1), bibextract(1), bibindex(1), bibjoin(1),
biblabel(1), biblex(1), biblook(1), biborder(1), bibparse(1),
bibsort(1), bibtex(1), bibunlex(1), citefind(1), citesub(1),
citetags(1), latex(1), scribe(1), tex(1).
AUTHOR
Nelson H. F. Beebe
Center for Scientific Computing
University of Utah
Department of Mathematics, 322 INSCC
155 S 1400 E RM 233
Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090
USA
Tel: +1 801 581 5254
FAX: +1 801 585 1640, +1 801 581 4148
Email: beebe@math.utah.edu, beebe@acm.org, beebe@ieee.org (Internet)
URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe
This Debianization of bibclean was done by Henning Makholm
<henning@makholm.net>, and differs from the upstream source in where it
looks for the system-wide initialization file (vanilla bibclean expects
to find it in $PATH), and has also been patched to ignore the built-in
BibTeX field-length limit for abstract fields.