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README of extract_bib python script

This script is extremely simple willingly. Its only goal is to extract all the Bibtex bibliographic references that are cited in a given Latex text file.

It is used to create a Bibtex database that contains only the references cited in the given Latex file. This can be useful, for example, when submitting a paper to create the .bib file needed for the submission.

1. Install

The goal of the script is to bee easy to install and use, therefore the only prerequisite is python 2.7.

Simply clone the repository (or copy the script) on your computer, and add the folder to your PATH environment variable. Linux users may need to add execution priviledges using chmod +x extract_bib.py

2. How to use it

To use it you need:

  • one Bibtex file with all your references. Important: the references entries must end with a line containing only the } character that closes the entry. This is normally the case if you use e.g. Jabref to manage your citations.
  • one Latex file. Use standard natbib commands, if you need custom commands, you will need to add them to the BIBTEXCOMMANDLIST global variable at the beginning of the script.

Then run extract_bib.py LatexFile BibtexFile in a command line replacing LatexFile with your Latex text file path and BibtexFile with your bibliographic file path.

If all the references cited in LatexFile are found in BibtexFile, the script outputs the subset to stdout. To create a file, just redirect the output to a file using ">" like this:

extract_bib.py LatexFile BibtexFile > newBibtexFile

If some references are not found, the script will report an error and end. This is useful to find the missing references from a Bibtex database for example.

3. Issues and compatibility

  • this script is written for python 2.7, it may work for some earlier releases, but it is not compatible with python 3
  • there may be errors if you use particular character encodings for you files, this has not been tested. It has been tested on UTF-8 encoding files sucessfully.
  • if your Bibtex entries are not ended with a line containing only "}" the script reports an error.

4. License

This script is released under the WTFPL_v2. See the file LICENSE for details.