[Tex/LaTex] Error: LaTeX Error: Something’s wrong–perhaps a missing \item

bibliographiesieee-styleieeeconfieeetran

I found a lot of posts about the same problem but none could help. Can you please help me figure out why I am getting this error? I am using: IEEEtran.bst and IEEEtran.cls. Both of those files and the main .tex file and the references.bib are in one folder. When I try to compile my script, I get this error:

test.bbl(24): Error: LaTeX Error: Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item.

Here is test.bbl:

% Generated by IEEEtran.bst, version: 1.12 (2007/01/11)
\begin{thebibliography}{}
\providecommand{\url}[1]{#1}
\csname url@samestyle\endcsname
\providecommand{\newblock}{\relax}
\providecommand{\bibinfo}[2]{#2}
\providecommand{\BIBentrySTDinterwordspacing}{\spaceskip=0pt\relax}
\providecommand{\BIBentryALTinterwordstretchfactor}{4}
\providecommand{\BIBentryALTinterwordspacing}{\spaceskip=\fontdimen2\font plus
\BIBentryALTinterwordstretchfactor\fontdimen3\font minus
  \fontdimen4\font\relax}
\providecommand{\BIBforeignlanguage}[2]{{%
\expandafter\ifx\csname l@#1\endcsname\relax
\typeout{** WARNING: IEEEtran.bst: No hyphenation pattern has been}%
\typeout{** loaded for the language `#1'. Using the pattern for}%
\typeout{** the default language instead.}%
\else
\language=\csname l@#1\endcsname
\fi
#2}}
\providecommand{\BIBdecl}{\relax}
\BIBdecl

\end{thebibliography}

And my test.tex:

\documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}
\begin{document}

\section{Test Citation}
\cite{logjam2015}

% ---- Bibliography ----
\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
\bibliography{references}

\end{document}

And the references.bib

@inproceedings{logjam2015,
 author               = {Adrian, David and Bhargavan, Karthikeyan and Durumeric, Zakir and Gaudry, Pierrick and Green, Matthew and Halderman, J. Alex and Heninger, Nadia and Springall, Drew and Thom{\'e}, Emmanuel and Valenta, Luke and VanderSloot, Benjamin and Wustrow, Eric and Zanella-B{\'e}guelin, Santiago and Zimmermann, Paul},
 booktitle            = {Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS '15)},
 pages                = {5-17},
 title                = {{I}mperfect {F}orward {S}ecrecy: {H}ow {D}iffie-{H}ellman {F}ails in {P}ractice},
 url                  = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2810103.2813707},
 year                 = {2015},
 }

Best Answer

You have generated the .bbl file at a time when your document contained no \cite or \nocite command. The error derives from a bad redefinition made by IEEEtran.cls of the \endthebibliography macro.

The standard classes have something like

\newenvironment{thebibliography}[1]
     {[irrelevant code omitted]}
     {\def\@noitemerr
       {\@latex@warning{Empty `thebibliography' environment}}%
      \endlist}

which implies

\def\endthebibliography{%
  \def\@noitemerr{\@latex@warning{Empty `thebibliography' environment}}%
  \endlist
}

but IEEEtran.cls has

\let\endthebibliography\endlist

which is plainly wrong.

If you fix it

\documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}

\makeatletter
\def\endthebibliography{%
  \def\@noitemerr{\@latex@warning{Empty `thebibliography' environment}}%
  \endlist
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\section{Test Citation}
\cite{logjam2015}

% ---- Bibliography ----
\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
\bibliography{references}

\end{document}

then also an empty .bbl file (that is, with no \bibitem command) will just produce a warning and not an error.

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