bibtex(1) Web2C 2025 bibtex(1)
NAME
bibtex - make a bibliography for (La)TeX
SYNOPSIS
bibtex [-min-crossrefs=number] [-terse] auxname[.aux]
DESCRIPTION
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 auxname 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.
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 base entry in the
citation list; the default is two. To avoid these automatic inclusions
altogether, give this option a sufficiently large number, and be sure
to remove any previous .aux and .bbl files. Otherwise the option may
appear to have no effect, since BibTeX will have added the citation for
the base entry to the .aux file, and nothing will remove it.
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.
bibtex 0.99d 18 March 2024 bibtex(1)
texlive-bin 2025.74524 - Generated Thu Mar 13 07:21:34 CDT 2025