Table of contents
bibcheck - check a BibTeX bibliography file
bibcheck
[
-author
]
[
-copyright
]
[
-debug
]
[
-help
]
[
-version
]
<infile >outfile
or
bibcheck
[
-author
]
[
-copyright
]
[
-debug
]
[
-help
]
[
-version
]
BibTeXfile(s) >outfile
bibcheck
applies heuristic checks to BibTeX files to
ferret out possible errors, portability problems,
and stylistic problems, often finding ones that
are quite difficult to spot by manual
proofreading.
Some of the checks made are
-
unrecognized token;
-
duplicate
@String
abbreviations;
-
duplicate citation labels;
-
duplicate keywords in a single bibliographic
entry;
-
unbalanced braces in value strings;
-
use of comma instead of
and
in author/editor names;
-
ellipses represented by consecutive dots, rather
than by a TeX control sequence;
-
horizontal tabs instead of spaces;
-
unprotected special characters (ampersand,
percent, sharp sign) that would have special
significance to TeX;
-
subscripts or superscripts outside of math mode;
-
unclosed math mode;
-
space before punctuation;
-
spaces or periods missing after initials;
-
tildes (TeX's tie command should be rare
in BibTeX files, because BibTeX normally
supplies needed ones);
-
non-standard characters in citation labels;
-
spurious blank lines;
-
braced partial words;
-
unbraced mixed-case words in titles;
-
hyphens instead of en-dashes in page-number
ranges;
-
typewriter quotation marks inside strings;
-
omitted protecting braces inside quotation marks;
-
trailing white space.
Warning messages identify the file name and line
number, in a format recognized by the GNU Emacs
compile
command, so that you can run it from within an
emacs(1)
session, and then position rapidly to the
source file locations where the messages were
raised.
lacheck(1)
performs similar checks on LaTeX files; its
great utility was the inspiration for this
program.
Command-line options may be abbreviated to a
unique leading prefix, and letter case is ignored.
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
stdout.
-
-copyright
-
Display a copyright message on
stdout.
-
-debug
-
Display a token stream on
stdout,
suitable for possible input to
bibunlex(1),
or for identifying the cause of a reported parsing
error.
-
-help
-
Display a usage message on
stdout.
-
-version
-
Display a program version message on
stdout.
bibclean(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),
emacs(1),
lacheck(1);
Nelson H. F. Beebe, Ph.D.
Center for Scientific Computing
Department of Mathematics
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, UT 84112
Tel: +1 801 581 5254
FAX: +1 801 581 4148
Email: <beebe@math.utah.edu>