[Tex/LaTex] problem with bibliography perhaps a missing item

bibtexmiktex

I am trying to produce a bibliography , using acl16 style. the code is the following:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{acl2016}
\usepackage{times}
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage{latexsym}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\special{papersize=210mm,297mm}
\title{}
\author{}
\date{}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\cite{Gusfield:97}
\bibliographystyle{acl2016}
\bibliography{example}
\end{document}

And I get the error:! LaTeX Error: Something's wrong–perhaps a missing \item.
In addition: Citation Gusfield:97 on page 1 is undefined. The bib file (example.bib) is–

\bibitem[\protect\citename{Gusfield}1997]{Gusfield:97}
Dan Gusfield.
\newblock 1997.
\newblock {\em Algorithms on Strings, Trees and Sequences}.
\newblock Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

I am using MikTex 2.9 and texmaker. The bbl produces only:

\begin{thebibliography}{}

\end{thebibliography}

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks

Best Answer

the contents of the bibliography as shown are in the format of a .bbl file, which is the output when a .bib file is run through bibtex.

two approaches are possible:

  • wrap \begin{thebibliography} ... \end{thebibliography} around this code and insert it into your tex file in place of \bibliography{example}

  • reconstruct the .bib file in the required format and rerun bibtex.

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