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BIBCLEAN(1) General Commands Manual BIBCLEAN(1) NAME bibclean - prettyprint and syntax check BibTeX and Scribe bibliography data base files SYNOPSIS bibclean [ -author ] [ -copyleft ] [ -copyright ] [ -error-log filename ] [ -help ] [ '-?' ] [ -init-file filename ] [ -ISBN-file filename ] [ -keyword-file filename ] [ -max-width nnn ] [ -[no-]align-equals ] [ -[no-]brace-protect ] [ -[no-]check-values ] [ -[no-]debug-match-failures ] [ -[no-]delete-empty-values ] [ -[no-]file-position ] [ -[no-]fix-accents ] [ -[no-]fix-braces ] [ -[no-]fix-degrees ] [ -[no-]fix-font-changes ] [ -[no-]fix-initials ] [ -[no-]fix-math ] [ -[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-ISBN-table ] [ -[no-]print-keyword-table ] [ -[no-]print-patterns ] [ -[no-]quiet ] [ -[no-]read-init-files ] [ -[no-]remove-OPT-prefixes ] [ -[no-]scribe ] [ -[no-]trace-file-opening ] [ -[no-]warnings ] [ -output-file filename ] [ -version ] <infile or 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. On VAX VMS and IBM PC DOS, the leading ``-'' on option names may be re- placed by a slash, ``/''; however, the ``-'' option prefix is always recognized. DESCRIPTION bibclean prettyprints input BibTeX files to stdout, or to a user-speci- fied file, and checks the brace balance and bibliography entry syntax as well. It can be used to detect problems in BibTeX files that some- times confuse even BibTeX itself, and importantly, can be used to nor- malize 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 be- cause they inhibit portability, and can suffer corruption in elec- tronic 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 let- ters by some bibliography styles. • CODEN, ISBN (International Standard Book Number) and ISSN (Interna- tional 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), bibex- tract(1), bibindex(1), bibjoin(1), biblabel(1), biblook(1), bibor- der(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 op- tions, the last setting determines the flag value used. That is sig- nificant 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, -au- thor 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 terminate with a success return code. Sometimes an exe- cutable program is separated from its docu- mentation and source code; this option pro- vides a way to recover from that. -copyleft Display copyright information on the stan- dard error unit, stderr, and then terminate with a success return code. -copyright Display copyright information on the stan- dard error unit, stderr, and then terminate with a success return code. -error-log filename Redirect stderr to the indicated file, which then contains 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 terminate with a success return code. -ISBN-file filename Provide an explicit ISBN-range initializa- tion file. It is processed after any sys- tem-wide and job-wide ISBN initialization files found on the PATH (for VAX VMS, SYS$SYSTEM) and BIBINPUTS search paths, re- spectively, and may override them. The ISBN initialization file name can be changed at compile time, or at run time through a setting of the environment vari- able BIBCLEANISBN, but defaults to .bib- clean.isbn on UNIX, and bibclean.isb else- where. For further details, see the ISBN INITIALIZATION FILES manual section. -init-file filename Provide an explicit value pattern initial- ization file. It is processed after any system-wide and job-wide initialization files found on the PATH (for VAX VMS, SYS$SYSTEM) and BIBINPUTS search paths, re- spectively, and may override them. It in turn may be overridden by a subsequent file-specific initialization file. The initialization file name can be changed at compile time, or at run time through a set- ting of the environment variable BIB- CLEANINI, but defaults to .bibcleanrc on UNIX, and to bibclean.ini elsewhere. For further details, see the INITIALIZATION FILES manual section. -keyword-file filename Provide an explicit keyword initialization file. It is processed after any system- wide and job-wide keyword initialization files found on the PATH (for VAX VMS, SYS$SYSTEM) and BIBINPUTS search paths, re- spectively, and may override them. The keyword initialization file name can be changed at compile time, or at run time through a setting of the environment vari- able BIBCLEANKEY, but defaults to .bib- clean.key on UNIX, and bibclean.key else- where. For further details, see the KEY- WORD INITIALIZATION FILES manual section. -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 ap- plications may require different maximum line widths, so this option provides that capability. The number following the op- tion name can be specified in decimal, oc- tal (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 wrap- ping is done only at a space. Consequently, a long non-blank character sequence may re- sult 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 ever exceeds 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-]brace-protect Protect uppercase and mixedcase words at brace-level zero with braces to prevent downcasing by some BibTeX styles. Default: yes. -[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. That checking is usually beneficial, but if it produces too many bogus warnings for a particular bibliography file, you can dis- able it with the negative form of this op- tion. Default: yes. -[no-]debug-match-failures With the positive form, print out a warning when a value pattern fails to match a value string. That is helpful in debugging new patterns, but because the output can be voluminous, you should use this option only with small test files, and initialization files that eliminate all patterns apart from the ones that you are testing. Default: no. -[no-]delete-empty-values With the positive form, remove all field/value pairs for which the value is an empty string. That is helpful in cleaning up bibliographies generated from text edi- tor 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-accents With the positive form, normalize TeX ac- cents in annotes, authors, booktitles, edi- tors, notes, remarks, and titles. Default: no. -[no-]fix-braces With the positive form, normalize bracing in annotes, authors, booktitles, editors, notes, remarks, and titles, by removing un- necessary levels of braces. Default: no. -[no-]fix-degrees With the positive form, remove spaces in author/editor fields inside braces after letter-ending periods. That makes reduc- tions from J. J. {Thomson, M. A., F. R. S.}, Frederick {Soddy, B. A. (Oxon.)}, and John A. {Cable, M. A., M. Ed., Dipl. Deutsch (Marburg), A. L. C. M.} to J. J. {Thomson, M.A., F.R.S.}, Frederick {Soddy, B.A. (Oxon.)}, and John A. {Cable, M.A., M.Ed., Dipl.Deutsch (Marburg), A.L.C.M.}, respectively. In journals in the humanities and history of science, as well as in some scientific journals until well into the 20th Century, academic, honorary, and professional titles and degrees are commonly attached to per- sonal names. Even though modern publishing practice avoids such decorations, for accu- racy, bibliography entries should prefer- ably retain them. Journal typographical practice generally follows the reductions described here. -[no-]fix-font-changes With the positive form, supply an addi- tional brace level around font changes in titles to protect against downcasing by some BibTeX styles. Font changes that al- ready 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 discoideum}, then downcasing incorrectly converts the phrase to lower-case letters. Most BibTeX users are surprised that bracing the initial let- ters does not prevent the downcase action. The correct coding is {{\em Dictyostelium discoideum}}. However, there are also le- gitimate cases where an extra level of bracing wrongly protects from downcasing. Consequently, bibclean normally does not supply an extra level of braces, but if you have a bibliography where the extra braces are routinely missing, you can use this op- tion to supply them. If you think that you need this option, it is strongly recommended that you apply bib- clean 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 must decide which of the two output files is the better choice, then repair the incorrect title bracing by hand. Because font changes in titles are uncom- mon, except for cases of the type that 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 af- ter a period following author initials. Default: yes. -[no-]fix-math With the positive form, improve readability of math mode in titles by inserting spaces around operators, deleting other unneces- sary space, and removing braces around sin- gle-character subscripts and superscripts. Default: no. -[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 conven- tions 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, in- visible hyphens, raised/lowered quotes, French guillemets, and discretionary hy- phens. Recognized character combinations are braced to prevent BibTeX from inter- preting the quote as a string delimiter. Quoted strings receive no special handling from this option, and because German nouns in titles must anyway be protected from the downcasing operation of most BibTeX bibli- ography styles, German value strings that use the overloaded quote character can al- ways be entered in the form "{...}", with- out 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 pre- served 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 contain- ing only spaces) in value strings. Nor- mally, paragraph breaks are collapsed into a single space. Spacing outside value strings remains under bibclean's control, and is not affected by this option. De- fault: no. -[no-]keep-preamble-spaces With the positive form, preserve all white- space 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. De- fault: no. -[no-]keep-string-spaces With the positive form, preserve all white- space 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. That may be useful to quickly trap runaway strings arising from mismatched delimiters. Default: yes. -[no-]prettyprint Normally, bibclean functions as a pret- typrinter. However, with the negative form of this option, it acts as a lexical ana- lyzer instead, producing a stream of lexi- cal tokens. See the LEXICAL ANALYSIS man- ual section for further details. Default: yes. -[no-]print-ISBN-table With the positive form, print the ISBN- range table on stderr, then terminate with a success return code. That action is taken after all command-line options are processed, and before any input files are read (other than those that are values of command-line options). The format of the output ISBN-range table is acceptable for input as an ISBN initial- ization file (see the ISBN INITIALIZATION FILES manual section). Default: no. -[no-]print-keyword-table With the positive form, print the keyword initialization table on stderr, then termi- nate with a success return code. That action is taken after all command-line options are processed, and before any input files are read (other than those that are values of command-line options). The format of the output table is accept- able for input as a keyword initialization file (see the KEYWORD INITIALIZATION FILES manual section). Default: no. -[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. When bibclean is compiled with native pat- tern-matching code (the default), those patterns are the ones that are used in checking value strings for valid syntax, and all of them are specified in initial- ization files, rather than hard-coded into the program. For further details, see the INITIALIZATION FILES manual section. De- fault: no. -[no-]quiet This option is the opposite of -[no-]warn- ing; it exists for user convenience, and for compatibility with other programs that use -q for quiet operation, without warn- ing messages. -[no-]read-init-files With the negative form, suppress loading of system-, user-, and file-specific initial- ization files. Initializations then 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 cor- responding value is not an empty string. The prefix ``OPT'' must be entirely in up- per-case to be recognized. This option is for bibliographies generated with the help of the GNU Emacs BibTeX edit- ing 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 recog- nize 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 is converted to conform to Bib- TeX 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 that bib- clean attempts to open. Use this option to identify where initialization files are lo- cated. Default: no. -[no-]warnings With the positive form, allow all warning messages. The negative form is not recom- mended because it may mask problems that should be repaired. Default: yes. -output-file filename Supply an alternate output file to replace stdout. If the filename cannot be opened for output, execution terminates immedi- ately with a nonzero exit code. -version Display the program version number on stderr, and then terminate with a success return code. That includes an indication of who compiled the program, the host name on which it was compiled, the time of com- pilation, and the type of string-value matching code selected, when that informa- tion 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 posi- tions should precisely pinpoint the erroneous bibliography entry, and the file positions 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, %%, be- ginning 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 com- pile<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 precipitates 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 rec- ognized on a line in which the first non-blank character is an at-sign (@). That ensures that nothing is lost from the input file(s), allow- ing corrections to be made in either the input or the output files. However, if bibclean detects an internal error in its data structures, it terminates abruptly without further input or output processing; that kind of error should never happen, and if it does, it should be re- ported immediately to the author of the program. Errors in initializa- tion files, and running out of dynamic memory, also immediately termi- nate bibclean. SEARCH PATHS Versions of bibclean before 3.00 found some of their initialization files in the same directory as the executable program. That design choice means that those files can be copied anywhere in the file sys- tem, and still be found at run time. Some software distributions, how- ever, prefer to follow the model where initialization and other related files are instead stored in a directory whose name is related to that of the executable by a conventional difference in filepath. For exam- ple, a program might be installed in /opt/bin and its associated files in /opt/share/lib/PROGRAMNAME/ or /opt/share/lib/PROGRAMNAME/PRO- GRAMVERSION/. The second form is preferable, because it permits multi- ple versions of the same program to be installed, as long as the exe- cutable program names carry a version suffix. Thus, a site might have installed programs named bibclean-1.00, bibclean-2.00, bibclean-2.15, and bibclean-3.00, with the versionless name bibclean being a symbolic link to whichever version is the desired local default. With most software packages, the absolute path to the directory con- taining associated files is compiled into the program, making it impos- sible to change the installation locations after the program has been built from source code. Some packages, however, instead use the location of the executable pro- gram to find files by relative path at runtime. In the above example, the program would determine its filesystem location at runtime, say /opt/bin, then find its associated files relative to that location in ../share/lib/PROGRAMNAME/PROGRAMVERSION/. From version 3.00, bibclean uses that second approach, with an associ- ated directory like ../share/lib/bibclean/3.00. That allows an instal- lation directory tree to be distributed to other systems and unbundled anywhere in the file system, as long as the relative paths are not changed. bibclean tests whether its compiled-in library path is a di- rectory on the local system, and if so, uses it. Otherwise, it re- places that path by a reconstructed one based on the location of the executable program. If the reconstructed path for the library direc- tory does not exist, it uses a warning. In either case, it continues normally. With the old approach, initialization files on Unix systems were named with a leading period, making them `hidden' files for the ls command. With the new practice, initialization files are no longer named as hid- den files. 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 pat- terns that come entirely from initialization files. • The third version uses special patterns that come entirely from initialization files. The second and third versions are the ones of most interest here, be- cause they allow the user to control what values are considered accept- able. However, command-line options can also be specified in initial- ization files, no matter which pattern matching choice was selected. When bibclean starts, it searches for initialization files, finding the first one in the system executable program search path (on UNIX and IBM PC DOS, PATH) and the first one in the BIBINPUTS search path, and processes them in turn. Then, when command-line arguments are processed, any additional files specified by -init-file filename op- tions are also processed. Finally, immediately before each named bib- liography file is processed, an attempt is made to process an initial- ization file with the same name, but with the extension changed to .ini. The default extension can be changed by a setting of the envi- ronment variable BIBCLEANEXT. That scheme permits system-wide, user- wide, session-wide, and file-specific initialization files to be sup- ported. When input is taken from stdin, there is no file-specific initializa- tion. For precise control, the -no-read-init-files option suppresses all ini- tialization files except those explicitly named by -init-file filename options, either on the command line, or in requested initialization files. Recursive execution of initialization files with nested -init-file op- tions is permitted; if the recursion is circular, bibclean finally gets a non-fatal initialization file open failure after opening too many files. That 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 ig- nored. That 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 break- ing at a backslash-newline pair; the backslash-newline pair is dis- carded. That processing happens while characters are being read, be- fore 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 become part of the com- ment. 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 line- feed). 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 interpre- tation as a comment), \" produces a quotation mark, and \\ produces a single backslash. An ASCII NUL (\0) in a string terminates it; that is a feature of the C programming language in which bibclean is implemented. Field/pattern pairs can be separated by arbitrary space, and option- ally, either an equals sign or colon functioning as an assignment oper- ator. 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 as- signments. An empty pattern string causes previously-loaded patterns for that field name to be forgotten. That 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 regu- lar-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 char- acters 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, because it matches 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 charac- ters, but that 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, that list should probably be reduced to just the first pattern, so that anything other than a digit string fails the pattern-match test. That is easily done by keeping bibliography-specific patterns in a corresponding file with extension .ini, because that file is read automatically. You should be sure to use empty pattern strings in the 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 pat- tern allows the match to succeed without checking that the next charac- ter in the value string is a quotation mark. Because the value strings are intended to be processed by TeX, the pat- tern matching ignores braces, and TeX control sequences, together with any space following those control sequences. Spaces around braces are preserved. That convention allows the pattern fragment A-AD-D to match the value string TN-K\slash 27-70, because the value is implicitly col- lapsed 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. That 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 is be included in the output message. Escape sequences are supported in message strings, just as they are in pattern strings. You can use that 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 appears in inverse video on display screens that sup- port ANSI terminal control sequences. Such practice is not normally recommended, because it may have undesirable effects on some output de- vices. Nevertheless, you may find it useful for restricted applica- tions. For some types of bibliography fields, bibclean contains special-pur- pose code to supplement or replace the pattern matching: • CODEN, ISBN and ISSN field values are handled that way be- cause their validation requires evaluation of checksums that cannot be expressed by simple patterns; no patterns are even used in these three cases. • When bibclean is compiled with pattern-matching code support, 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 pat- terns 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 matches an author name, a colon, a four- digit year, a colon, and an alphabetic string, in the BibNet Project style: key = "A:dddd:A" %% Knuth:1986:TB Notice that no quotation marks are included in the pattern, because the citation keys are not quoted. You can use such patterns to help en- force uniform naming conventions for citation keys, which is increas- ingly important as your bibliography data base grows. ISBN INITIALIZATION FILES bibclean contains a compiled-in table of ISBN ranges and country/lan- guage settings that is suitable for most applications. However, ISBN data change yearly, as new countries adopt ISBNs, and as publishers are granted new, or additional, ISBN prefixes. Thus, from version 2.12, bibclean supports reading of run-time ISBN initialization files found on the PATH (for VAX VMS, SYS$SYSTEM) and BIBINPUTS search paths, and then any specified by -ISBN-file filename options. That feature makes it possible to incorporate new ISBN data without having to produce a new bibclean release and reinstall the software at end-user sites. The format of an ISBN initialization file is similar to that of the bibclean initialization files described in the preceding section: com- ments begin with percent and continue to end of line, blank and empty lines are ignored, backslash-newline joins adjacent lines, and other- wise, lines are expected to contain a required pair of ISBN coun- try/language-publisher prefixes forming a non-decreasing range, option- ally followed by one or more words of text that are treated as the country/language group value. The latter value plays no part in ISBN validation, but its presence is strongly recommended, in order to make the ISBN table more understandable for humans. Here is a short example: %% The Faeroes got ISBN assignments between 1993 and 1998 99918-0 99918-3 Faeroes 99918-40 99918-61 99918-900 99918-938 It is not necessary to repeat the country names on succeeding entries with the same initial number (99918 in that example); that is handled internally. Data from ISBN files normally augment the compiled-in data. However, if the first prefix begins with a hyphen, then bibclean deletes the first entry in the table matching that first prefix (ignoring the lead- ing hyphen): %% Latvia got ISBN ranges between 1993 and 1998 %% so we remove the old placeholder, then add the %% new ranges. -9984-0 9984-9 This one is no longer valid 9984-00 9984-20 Latvia 9984-500 9984-770 9984-9000 9984-9984 KEYWORD INITIALIZATION FILES bibclean contains a compiled-in table of keyword mappings that is suit- able for most applications. The default settings merely adjust letter- case in certain keyword names, so that, for example, isbn is output as ISBN. From version 2.12, bibclean supports reading of run-time keyword ini- tialization files found on the PATH (for VAX VMS, SYS$SYSTEM) and BIB- INPUTS search paths, and then any specified by -keyword-file filename options. That feature makes it possible to incorporate special spellings of new keywords without having to produce a new bibclean release and reinstall the software at end-user sites. The format of a keyword initialization file is similar to that of the other bibclean initialization files described in the preceding sec- tions: comments begin with percent and continue to end of line, blank and empty lines are ignored, backslash-newline joins adjacent lines, and otherwise, lines are expected to contain a required pair of old and new keyword names. Here is a short example: %% We want special handling of MathReviews keywords mrclass MRclass mrnumber MRnumber mrreviewer MRreviewer Data from keywords files normally augment the compiled-in data. How- ever, if the first keyword begins with a hyphen, then bibclean deletes the first entry in the table matching that keyword (ignoring the lead- ing hyphen): %% Remove special handling of ISBN, ISSN, and LCCN values. -issn ISSN -isbn ISBN -lccn LCCN Even though the second keyword in each deletion pair is not used, it still must be specified. Notice that this feature can be used to regularize keyword names, but use it with care, in order to avoid producing duplicate key names in output BibTeX entries: %% Map variations of keywords into a common name: keys keywords keywds keywords keyword keywords keywrd keywords keywrds keywords searchkey keywords 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 be- ginning with the warning prefix, %%, or the error prefix, ??, and for ANSI/ISO Standard C line-number directives of the form # line 273 "texbook1.bib" that 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 are wrapped at a backslash-newline pair, and consequently, soft- ware that processes the lexical token stream should be prepared to col- lapse 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 extracts a sorted list of all citation keys in the file mylib.bib. A certain amount of processing has been done on the tokens. In partic- ular, delimiters equivalent to braces have been replaced by braces, and braced strings 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 Edi- tion, May 1980. Scribe was originally developed by Brian Reid at Carnegie-Mellon University, and was marketed by Unilogic, Ltd., later renamed to Scribe Systems, and apparently now long defunct. 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 sur- round 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 unam- biguous. (5) Delimiters can be omitted around values that contain only let- ters, 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 de- limiters. (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 de- limiter 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{com- ment}''/``@End{comment}'' pairs may not be nested. (11) The key field is required in each bibliography entry. (12) A backslashed quote in a string is 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 that loose syntax, bibclean's normal error detection heuris- tics 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: .bib- cleanrc (UNIX), bibclean.ini (non-UNIX). BIBCLEANISBN Name of bibclean ISBN initialization files. Default: .bibclean.isbn (UNIX), bibclean.isb (non-UNIX). BIBCLEANKEY Name of bibclean keyword initialization files. Default: .bibclean.key (UNIX), bibclean.key (non-UNIX). BIBINPUTS Search path for bibclean and BibTeX input files. On UNIX, it 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. On other operating systems, the directory names should be separated by whatever character is used in system search path specifications, such as a semicolon on IBM PC DOS. PATH On Atari TOS, IBM PC DOS, IBM PC OS/2, Microsoft NT, and UNIX, search path for system executable files. The sys- tem-wide bibclean initialization file is searched for in that path. SYS$SYSTEM On VAX VMS, search path for system executable files and the system-wide bibclean initialization file. FILES *.bib BibTeX and Scribe bibliography data base files. *.ini File-specific initialization files. .bibclean.isbn UNIX system-wide and user-specific ISBN initialization files. .bibclean.key UNIX system-wide and user-specific keyword initializa- tion files. .bibcleanrc UNIX system-wide and user-specific initialization files. bibclean.ini Non-UNIX system-wide and user-specific initialization files. bibclean.isb Non-UNIX system-wide and user-specific ISBN initializa- tion files. bibclean.key Non-UNIX system-wide and user-specific keyword initial- ization files. SEE ALSO bibcheck(1), bibdup(1), bibextract(1), bibindex(1), bibjoin(1), bibla- bel(1), biblex(1), biblook(1), biborder(1), bibparse(1), bibsearch(1), bibsort(1), bibtex(1), bibunlex(1), citefind(1), citesub(1), cite- tags(1), latex(1), scribe(1), tex(1). AUTHOR Nelson H. F. Beebe University of Utah Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB 155 S 1400 E RM 233 Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090 USA Tel: +1 801 581 5254 FAX: +1 801 581 4148 Email: beebe@math.utah.edu, beebe@acm.org, beebe@computer.org (Internet) URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe COPYRIGHT ######################################################################## ######################################################################## ######################################################################## ### ### ### bibclean: prettyprint and syntax check BibTeX and Scribe ### ### bibliography data base files ### ### ### ### Copyright (C) 1990--2016 Nelson H. F. Beebe ### ### ### ### This program is covered by the GNU General Public License (GPL), ### ### version 2 or later, available as the file COPYING in the program ### ### source distribution, and on the Internet at ### ### ### ### ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/GPL ### ### ### ### http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html ### ### ### ### This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or ### ### modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as ### ### published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of ### ### the License, or (at your option) any later version. ### ### ### ### This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, ### ### but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of ### ### MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the ### ### GNU General Public License for more details. ### ### ### ### You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public ### ### License along with this program; if not, write to the Free ### ### Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, ### ### MA 02111-1307 USA ### ######################################################################## ######################################################################## ######################################################################## Version 3.05 18 May 2020 BIBCLEAN(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | ERROR RECOVERY AND WARNINGS | SEARCH PATHS | INITIALIZATION FILES | ISBN INITIALIZATION FILES | KEYWORD INITIALIZATION FILES | LEXICAL ANALYSIS | SCRIBE BIBLIOGRAPHY FORMAT | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | FILES | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR | COPYRIGHT
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