DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / texlive-bibtex-extra / bbl2bib.1.en
bbl2bib(1) LATEX CROSSREFWARE bbl2bib(1)

bbl2bib.pl - convert thebibliography environment to a bib file

bbl2bib.pl [-d] [-u] [-o output] file

[-d]
Send debugging output to stdout
Output file. If this option is not used, the name for the output file is formed by changing the extension to ".bib"
Do not clean URL fields.

Normally "bbl2bib" recognizes URL fields of the kind "http://dx.doi.org" and their variants and converts them to DOI fields (see also biburl2doi(1) script). The switch -u suppresses this cleanup.

The script tries to reconstruct a "bib" file from the corresponding "thebibliography" environment. One can argue that this operation is akin to reconstructing a cow from the steak. The way the script does it is searching for the entry in the MR database, and creating the corresponding BibTeX fields.

The script reads a TeX or Bbl file and extracts from it the "thebibliography" environment. For each bibitem it creates a plain text bibliography entry, and then tries to match it in the database.

We assume some structure of the input file:

1.
The bibliography is contained between the lines

   \begin{thebibliography}...
    

and

   \end{thebibliography}
    
2.
Each bibliography item starts from the line

   \bibitem[...]{....}
    

   bbl2bib  -o - file.tex > result.bib
   bbl2bib  -o result.bib file.bbl
   bbl2bib  file.tex

Boris Veytsman

Copyright (C) 2014-2022 Boris Veytsman

This is free software. You may redistribute copies of it under the terms of the GNU General Public License <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

2022-10-18