


BIBCHECK(1)		  User Commands		      BIBCHECK(1)



NAME
     bibcheck -	check a	BibTeX bibliography file

SYNOPSIS
     bibcheck <infile >outfile
     or
     bibcheck BibTeXfile(s) >outfile

DESCRIPTION
     bibcheck applies heuristic	checks to BibTeX files to  ferret
     out  possible  errors,  portability  problems, and	stylistic
     problems, often finding ones that	are  quite  difficult  to
     spot by manual proofreading.

     Some of the checks	made are

     o	 duplicate @String abbreviations;  o  duplicate	 citation
	labels;	 o  use	 of comma instead of and in author/editor
	names; o ellipses represented by consecutive dots, rather
	than by	a TeX control sequence;

     o	 horizontal tabs instead of spaces;

      o	  unprotected  special	characters  (ampersand,	 percent,
	sharp sign) that would have special significance to TeX;

     o	 subscripts or superscripts outside of math mode;

     o	 unclosed math mode;

     o	 space before punctuation;

     o	 spaces	missing	after initials;

     o	 tildes	(TeX's tie  command  should  be	 rare  in  BibTeX
	files, because BibTeX normally supplies	needed ones);

     o	 non-standard characters in citation labels;

     o	 spurious blank	lines;

     o	 braced	partial	words;

     o	 unbraced mixed-case words in titles;

     o	 hyphens instead of en-dashes in page-number ranges;

     o	 quotation marks inside	strings;

     o	 trailing white	space.





Version	0.06	  Last change: 11 October 1994			1






BIBCHECK(1)		  User Commands		      BIBCHECK(1)



     Warning messages identify the file	name and line number,  in
     a	format	recognized  by	the GNU	Emacs compile command, so
     that you can run it from within an	Emacs session,	and  then
     position rapidly to the source file locations where the mes-
     sages were	raised.

     lacheck(1)	performs similar checks	on LaTeX files;	its great
     utility was the inspiration for this program.

CAVEATS
     BibTeX has	loose syntactical requirements that  the  current
     simple implementation of bibcheck does not	support.  In par-
     ticular, outer parentheses	may  not  be  used  in	place  of
     braces  following ``@keyword'' patterns.  If you have such	a
     file, you can use bibclean(1) to prettyprint it into a  form
     that bibcheck can handle successfully.

SEE ALSO
     bibclean(1),  bibextract(1),  biblex(1),  biborder(1),  bib-
     parse(1),	 bibsort(1),  bibtex(1),  bibunlex(1),	emacs(1),
     lacheck(1), nawk(1).

AUTHOR
     Nelson H. F. Beebe, Ph.D.
     Center for	Scientific Computing
     Department	of Mathematics
     University	of Utah
     Salt Lake City, UT	84112
     Tel: +1 801 581 5254
     FAX: +1 801 581 4148
     Email: <beebe@math.utah.edu>
























Version	0.06	  Last change: 11 October 1994			2



