DOKK / manpages / debian 11 / biber / Biber.3pm.en
Biber(3pm) User Contributed Perl Documentation Biber(3pm)

Biber - main module for biber, a bibtex replacement for users of biblatex

    use Biber;
    my $biber = Biber->new();
    $biber->parse_ctrlfile("example.bcf");
    $biber->prepare;

    Initialize the Biber object, optionally passing named options as arguments.

   Output summary of warnings/errors/misc before exit

    Returns a File::Temp directory object for use in various things

    Returns the directory name of the File::Temp directory object

    my $sections= $biber->sections
    Returns a Biber::Sections object describing the bibliography sections

    Adds a Biber::Sections object. Used externally from, e.g. biber

    my $datalists = $biber->datalists
    Returns a Biber::DataLists object describing the bibliography sorting lists

    Returns a Biber::LangTags object containing a parser for BCP47 tags

    Sets the object used to output final results
    Must be a subclass of Biber::Output::base

    Returns the current preamble as an array ref

    Returns the object used to output final results

    Sets the current section number that we are working on to a section number

    Gets the current section number that we are working on

  Fakes parts of the control file for tool mode

    This method reads the control file
    generated by biblatex to work out the various biblatex options.
    See Constants.pm for defaults and example of the data structure being built here.

   Place to put misc pre-processing things needed later

   Place to put misc pre-processing things needed later for tool mode

  Resolve aliases in xref/crossref/xdata which take keys as values to their real keys
  We use set_datafield as we are overriding the alias in the datasource

 Remove citekey aliases from citekeys as they don't point to real
 entries.

    This instantiates any dynamic entries so that they are available
    for processing later on. This has to be done before most all other
    processing so that when we call $section->bibentry($key), as we
    do many times in the code, we don't die because there is a key but
    no Entry object.

    Resolve xdata

    Promotes set member to cited status

    $biber->preprocess_sets
    This records the set information for use later

    $biber->calculate_interentry
    Ensures that crossrefs/xrefs that are directly cited or cross-referenced
    at least mincrossrefs/minxrefs times are included in the bibliography.

    $biber->process_interentry
    Ensures proper inheritance of data from cross-references.

  Validate bib data according to a datamodel
  Note that we are validating the internal Biber::Entries
  after they have been created from the datasources so this is
  datasource neutral, as it should be. It is here to enforce
  adherence to what biblatex expects.

    Generate name strings and disambiguation schema. Has to be in the context
    of a data list (reference context) because uniquenametemplate can be specified
    per-list/context

  Adds required per-entry options etc. to sets

  Processing of entries which is not list-specific and which can therefore
  insert data directly into entries

    Main processing operations, to generate metadata and entry information
    This method is automatically called by C<prepare>.
    Runs prior to uniqueness processing

    More processing operations, to generate things which require uniqueness
    information like namehash
    Runs after uniqueness processing

    Final processing operations which depend on all previous processing

    Track seen primary author base names for generation of uniqueprimaryauthor

    Track seen work combination for generation of singletitle, uniquetitle, uniquebaretitle and
    uniquework

    Track labelname/date parts combination for generation of extradate

    Track labelname only for generation of extraname

    Track labelname/labeltitle combination for generation of extratitle

    Track labeltitle/labelyear combination for generation of extratitleyear

    Postprocess set entries
    Checks for common set errors and enforces "dataonly" options for set members.
    It's not necessary to set skipbib, skipbiblist in the OPTIONS field for
    the set members as these are automatically set by biblatex due to the \inset

    Generate nocite information

    Generate labelname information.

    Generate labeldate information, including times

  Generate labeltitle
  Note that this is not conditionalised on the biblatex "labeltitle"
  as labeltitle should always be output since all standard styles need it.
  Only extratitle is conditionalised on the biblatex "labeltitle" option.

    Generate fullhash

    Generate namehash

    Generate per_name_hashes

    Generate the visible name information.
    This is used in various places and it is useful to have it generated in one place.

    Generate the labelalpha and also the variant for sorting

    Generate the extraalpha information

    Put presort fields for an entry into the main Biber bltx state
    so that it is all available in the same place since this can be
    set per-type and globally too.

    Process a bibliography list

    Run an entry through a list filter. Returns a boolean.

    Generate sort data schema for Sort::Key from sort spec like this:
  spec   => [
              [undef, { presort => {} }],
              [{ final => 1 }, { sortkey => {} }],
              [
                {'sort_direction'  => 'descending'},
                { sortname => {} },
                { author => {} },
                { editor => {} },
                { translator => {} },
                { sorttitle => {} },
                { title => {} },
              ],
              [undef, { sortyear => {} }, { year => {} }],
              [undef, { sorttitle => {} }, { title => {} }],
              [undef, { volume => {} }, { "0000" => {} }],
            ],

    Generate information for sorting

    Generate the uniqueness information needed when creating .bbl

    Gather the uniquename information as we look through the names
    What is happening in here is the following: We are registering the
    number of occurrences of each name, name+init and fullname within a
    specific context. For example, the context is "global" with uniquename
    < mininit and "name list" for uniquename=mininit or minfull. The keys
    we store to count this are the most specific information for the
    context, so, for uniquename < mininit, this is the full name and for
    uniquename=mininit or minfull, this is the complete list of full names.
    These keys have values in a hash which are ignored. They serve only to
    accumulate repeated occurrences with the context and we don't care
    about this and so the values are a useful sinkhole for such repetition.
    For example, if we find in the global context a base name "Smith" in two different entries
    under the same form "Alan Smith", the data structure will look like:
    {Smith}->{global}->{Alan Smith} = 2
    We don't care about the value as this means that there are 2 "Alan Smith"s in the global
    context which need disambiguating identically anyway. So, we just count the keys for the
    base name "Smith" in the global context to see how ambiguous the base name itself is. This
    would be "1" and so "Alan Smith" would get uniquename=false because it's unambiguous as just
    "Smith".
    The same goes for "minimal" list context disambiguation for uniquename=mininit or minfull.
    For example, if we had the base name "Smith" to disambiguate in two entries with labelname
    "John Smith and Alan Jones", the data structure would look like:
    {Smith}->{Smith+Jones}->{John Smith+Alan Jones} = 2
    Again, counting the keys of the context for the base name gives us "1" which means we
    have uniquename=false for "John Smith" in both entries because it's the same list. This also
    works for repeated names in the same list "John Smith and Bert Smith". Disambiguating
    "Smith" in this:
    {Smith}->{Smith+Smith}->{John Smith+Bert Smith} = 2
    So both "John Smith" and "Bert Smith" in this entry get
    uniquename=false (of course, as long as there are no other "X Smith and
    Y Smith" entries where X != "John" or Y != "Bert").
    The values from biblatex.sty:
    false   = 0
    init    = 1
    true    = 2
    full    = 2
    allinit = 3
    allfull = 4
    mininit = 5
    minfull = 6

   Generate the per-name uniquename values using the information
   harvested by create_uniquename_info()

    Gather the uniquelist information as we look through the names

   Generate the per-namelist uniquelist values using the information
   harvested by create_uniquelist_info()

    Generate information for data which may changes per datalist

    Generate the singletitle field, if requested. The information for generating
    this is gathered in process_workuniqueness()

    Generate the uniquetitle field, if requested. The information for generating
    this is gathered in process_workuniqueness()

    Generate the uniquebaretitle field, if requested. The information for generating
    this is gathered in process_workuniqueness()

    Generate the uniquework field, if requested. The information for generating
    this is gathered in process_workuniqueness()

    Generate the uniqueprimaryauthor field, if requested. The information for generating
    this is gathered in create_uniquename_info()

    Sort a list using information in entries according to a certain sorting template.
    Use a flag to skip info messages on first pass

   Preprocessing for options. Used primarily to perform process-intensive
   operations which can be done once instead of inside dense loops later.

    Do the main work.
    Process and sort all entries before writing the output.

    Do the main work for tool mode

    Fetch citekey and dependents data from section datasources
    Expects to find datasource packages named:
    Biber::Input::<type>::<datatype>
    and one defined subroutine called:
    Biber::Input::<type>::<datatype>::extract_entries
    which takes args:
    1: Biber object
    2: Datasource name
    3: Reference to an array of cite keys to look for
    and returns an array of the cite keys it did not find in the datasource

  Get dependents of the entries for a given list of citekeys. Is called recursively
  until there are no more dependents to look for.

    Remove undefined dependent keys from an entry using a map of
    dependent keys to entries

   Convenience sub to parse a .bcf sorting section and return nice
   sorting object

    Dump the biber object with Data::Dump for debugging

Philip Kime "<philip at kime.org.uk>"

Please report any bugs or feature requests on our Github tracker at <https://github.com/plk/biber/issues>.

Copyright 2009-2012 Francois Charette and Philip Kime, all rights reserved. Copyright 2012-2020 Philip Kime, all rights reserved.

This module is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Artistic License 2.0.

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.

2021-01-09 perl v5.32.0