[Tex/LaTex] Difference between a .bib and .bbl file for Latex

bibtex

I want to use a .bib file in a conference .tex file where they precise that we should use a bibliography generated by BibTeX as a .bbl file:

\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
% argument is your BibTeX string definitions and bibliography    
  %database(s)
\bibliography{IEEEabrv,../bib/paper}

When I use directly:

\bibliography{refs} %refs is my refs.bib

I get an error.

Must I convert the .bib to a .bbl? If yes, how?

Best Answer

It's actually pretty easy. I'm sure you will enjoy using BibTeX for the rest of your life!

Here explains exactly how you do it: http://www.bibtex.org/Using/

Nevertheless, you can also use the program 'pdflatex' in your LaTeX code, and that's enough!

Editing: you don't actually have to read anything from the generated .bbl file. You only deal with .bib

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[Tex/LaTex] BibTeX cannot find .bib file

I finally managed to solve this problem on my own:

Jabref was encoding the bib-files in 16bit and Bibtex was expecting 8bit-code. After switching to 8bit in the Jabref-options the problem solved itself.

Thank you so much for all your efforts.

[Tex/LaTex] How to use .bib file in the own LaTeX file

For citing sources using BibTeX, you should use \cite{...}, and when you don't cite any sources, you get an error message like this:

! LaTeX Error: Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item.

See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...                                              

l.24 \end{thebibliography}

I hereby provide a working example. Adding \usepackage{cite} is optional, but for having the capability of sorting and compression of references, you will need cite package. I have used a single \cite{...}, but If you don't want to cite any sources in the article, you can use \nocite{*} to include all the sources available in your bib file to be included in the list of references.

\documentclass[journal]{IEEEtran}
\usepackage{cite}
\begin{document}

This is a citation\cite{mycite}

\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
\bibliography{IEEEabrv,testing} %testing.bib is my .bib file

\end{document}

To compile your file, you should run latex 3 times on your file. Assuming that your file is name document.tex, you should do:

latex document
bibtex document
latex document
latex document

Please note that machine generated bibliography files are sometimes messy, so you may have to edit them manually.

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] BibTeX cannot find .bib file

[Tex/LaTex] How to use .bib file in the own LaTeX file

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