[Tex/LaTex] Edition field in BibTeX: How to use “custom” entries

bibliographiesbibtex

As far as I know the recommended way to fill the edition field for BiBTeX entries is to use write out ordinal numbers capitalized such as

edition = {Second}

BibTeX then usually outputs "second edition". Now I would like to put a different information there, e.g.

edition = {reprint}

and I don't want BibTeX to write "reprint edition", but only "reprint". I have read that there are bibstyles which check whether the edition field is an ordinal word and if not write out the field content unchanged. Can somebody point me to such a style file?

Best Answer

I'm not aware of such a style, but that needn't mean much. If it so happens that you don't have any other bibliography entries with edition information, you could try the following. In the file unsrt.bst, there should be the following function:

FUNCTION {format.edition}
{ edition empty$
    { "" }
    { output.state mid.sentence =
        { edition "l" change.case$ " edition" * }
        { edition "t" change.case$ " edition" * }
      if$
    }
  if$
}

You could replace the strings " edition" with "" (or eliminate them altogether).

Of course, if you do have other bib entries with edition information, you'll have to change the contents of their edition fields from "First", "Second", etc to "First edition", "Second edition", etc. I therefore can't recommend this bibtex hack whole-heartedly. Anyway, what's so bad about a field labelled "Reprint edition" that you feel a need to change it to "Reprint"?

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[Tex/LaTex] LaTeX stopped building a BibTeX bibliography, how to troubleshoot it

Summarised (and expanded) from comments above:

BibTeX uses the aux file written by LaTeX (showing where you want to cite what) together with a bst file (containing stylistic information - such as plain.bst) and a bib file (containing bibliographic information about any document you might want to reference). So a workflow from the command line might look like

latex - to generate the aux file
bibtex - to generate a bbl file which contains information about the specific references mentioned in the aux file, formatted correctly
latex - to incorporate the information in the bbl file into your typeset document
possibly latex again, to fix any cross-referencing problems introduced when all the citations were included

Looking at the aux and bbl files along the way - and, as @Joseph pointed out, the blg file which is BibTeX's log - can help to troubleshoot problems.

For completeness as an answer: on this occasion it apparently turned out that the bibtex step wasn't working due to a typo in the name of the bst file.

[Tex/LaTex] In bst file, check if variable contains string

We use the string.length function from Tame the Beast, the or function should be contained in your bst file already. Then we define a simple search function that tests whether a string is contained in another string. Using this, we can test for "collaboration" and "Collaboration" in the collaboration field. Note that we do not need to test for the plural forms, as searching for the singular form will find those plurals, too.

INTEGERS{ l }
FUNCTION{ string.length }
{
  #1 'l :=
  {duplicate$ duplicate$ #1 l substring$ = not}
    { l #1 + 'l :=}
  while$
  pop$ l
}

INTEGERS {find.length search.start search.end done}
STRINGS {find.string find.pattern}
FUNCTION {contains}
{
  'find.pattern :=
  'find.string :=
  find.pattern string.length 'find.length :=
  #1 'search.start :=
  find.string string.length find.length - #2 + 'search.end :=
  #0 'done :=
  { search.start search.end < }
  {
    find.string search.start find.length substring$ find.pattern =
      { 
        #1 'done :=
        search.end 'search.start :=%% stop searching
      }
      { #1 search.start + 'search.start := }
    if$
  }
  while$
  done
}

FUNCTION {format.collaboration}
{ collaboration empty$
    { "" }
    { collaboration num.names$ #1 >
        { " (" collaboration *
          collaboration "collaboration" contains
          collaboration "Collaboration" contains or
            { ")" * }
            { " Collaborations)" * }
          if$
        }
        { " (" collaboration *
          collaboration "collaboration" contains
          collaboration "Collaboration" contains or
            { ")" * }
            { " Collaboration)" * }
          if$
        }
    if$
    }
  if$
}

As a final note I would advice against those hacks, and change the bib file instead. BibTeX is meant to just format the bibliography, not to alter the content. If you would like to use another style, or switch to biblatex, those inconsistent BibTeX entries come back to bite you, again.

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] In bst file, check if variable contains string

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