This manual page is not meant to be exhaustive. The complete
documentation for this version of TeX can be found in the info file
or manual
Web2C: A TeX implementation.
BibTeX reads the top-level auxiliary
(.aux)
file that was output during the running of
latex(1)
or
tex(1)
and creates a bibliography
(.bbl)
file that will be incorporated into the document on subsequent runs of
LaTeX or TeX. The
auxname
on the command line must be given without the
.aux
extension. If you don't give the
auxname,
the program prompts you for it.
BibTeX looks up, in bibliographic database
(.bib)
files specified by the \bibliography command,
the entries specified by the \cite and \nocite commands
in the LaTeX or TeX source file.
It formats the information from those entries
according to instructions in a bibliography style
(.bst)
file (specified by the \bibliographystyle command,
and it outputs the results to the
.bbl
file.
The LaTeX manual
explains what a LaTeX source file must contain to work with BibTeX.
Appendix B of the manual describes the format of the
.bib
files. The `BibTeXing' document describes extensions and details of
this format, and it gives other useful hints for using BibTeX.
OPTIONS
The
-min-crossrefs
option defines the minimum number of
crossref
required for automatic inclusion of the crossref'd entry on the citation
list; the default is two.
With the
-terse
option, BibTeX operates silently. Without it, a banner and progress
reports are printed on
stdout.
ENVIRONMENT
BibTeX searches the directories in the
path defined by the BSTINPUTS environment variable for
.bst
files. If BSTINPUTS is not set, it uses the system default.
For
.bib
files, it uses the BIBINPUTS environment variable if that is set,
otherwise the default.
See
tex(1)
for the details of the searching.
If the environment variable
TEXMFOUTPUT is set, BibTeX attempts to put its output
files in it, if they cannot be put in the current directory. Again, see
tex(1).
No special searching is done for the
.aux
file.
FILES
*.bst
Bibliography style files.
btxdoc.tex
``BibTeXing'' - LaTeXable documentation for general BibTeX users
btxhak.tex
``Designing BibTeX Styles'' - LaTeXable documentation for style designers
btxdoc.bib
database file for those two documents
xampl.bib
database file giving examples of all standard entry types
btxbst.doc
template file and documentation for the standard styles
All those files should be available somewhere on your system.
The host math.utah.edu has a vast collection of
.bib
files available for anonymous ftp, including references for all the
standard TeX books and a complete bibliography for TUGboat.
SEE ALSO
latex(1),
tex(1).
Leslie Lamport,
LaTeX - A Document Preparation System,
Addison-Wesley, 1985, ISBN 0-201-15790-X.
AUTHOR
Oren Patashnik, Stanford University. This man page describes the web2c
version of BibTeX. Other ports of BibTeX, such as Donald Knuth's version
using the Sun Pascal compiler, do not have the same path searching
implementation, or the command-line options.
