BIBTEX(1)

NAME
bibtex - make a bibliography for (La)TeX

SYNOPSIS
bibtex [-min-crossrefs=number] [-terse] auxname[.aux]

DESCRIPTION
BibTeX reads the top-level auxiliary (.aux) file auxname that was output during (typically) the running of latex(1) or tex(1), and creates a bibliography (.bbl) file that will be incorporated into the document on subsequent runs of LaTeX or TeX.

BibTeX looks up, in bibliographic database (.bib) files specified by the \bibliography command, the entries specified by the \cite and \nocite commands in the LaTeX or TeX source file. It formats the information from those entries according to instructions in a bibliography style (.bst) file (specified by the \bibliographystyle command), and it outputs the results to the .bbl file.

The LaTeX manual explains what a LaTeX source file must contain to work with BibTeX. Appendix B of the manual describes the format of the .bib files.

The short `BibTeXing' (``btxdoc'') document describes extensions and details of this format, and gives other useful hints for using BibTeX.

BibTeX can also be used with plain TeX, via \input btxmac; the interface is essentially the same as LaTeX. The support is included in eplain(1), and the Eplain manual explains the usage, which is essentially the same as in LaTeX: https://tug.org/eplain/doc/eplain.html#Citations

OPTIONS
See tex(1) for details of command-line parsing.

The -min-crossrefs option defines the minimum number of crossref required for automatic inclusion of the crossref base entry in the citation list; the default is two. To avoid these automatic inclusions altogether, give this option a sufficiently large number, and be sure to remove any previous .aux and .bbl files. Otherwise the option may appear to have no effect, since BibTeX will have added the citation for the base entry to the .aux file, and nothing will remove it.

With the -terse option, BibTeX operates silently. Without it, a banner and progress reports are printed on stdout.

The standard -help and -version options are also supported.

ENVIRONMENT
BibTeX searches the directories in the path defined by the BSTINPUTS environment variable for .bst files. If BSTINPUTS is not set, it uses the system default. For .bib files, it uses the BIBINPUTS environment variable if that is set, otherwise the default. See tex(1) for the details of the searching.

If the environment variable TEXMFOUTPUT is set, BibTeX attempts to put its output files in it, if they cannot be put in the current directory. Again, see tex(1). No special searching is done for the .aux file.

FILES

*.bst
    Bibliography style files.

btxdoc.tex
    ``BibTeXing'' - documentation for BibTeX users

btxhak.tex
    ``Designing BibTeX Styles'' - documentation for .bst writers

btxdoc.bib
    database file for those two documents

xampl.bib
    database file giving examples of all standard entry types

btxbst.doc
    template file and documentation for the standard styles

btxmac.tex
    BibTeX for plain TeX

All those files should be available somewhere on your system. Running texdoc btxdoc (or btxhak) may display the above documents.

SEE ALSO
latex(1), eplain(1), tex(1).

BibTeX home page: https://tug.org/bibtex
Bib-related CTAN topics: https://ctan.org/topic/:B
BibTeX package page on CTAN: https://ctan.org/pkg/bibtex
(which has links to the above documents, among others).

Leslie Lamport, LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, Addison-Wesley.

Bibliography support in plain TeX: https://tug.org/eplain/doc/eplain.html#Citations

BibTeX chapter in the Web2c manual: https://tug.org/texinfohtml/web2c.html#BibTeX

Typeset source code for BibTeX: https://ctan.org/pkg/knuth-pdf

Thanks to Nelson Beebe, the University of Utah has a vast collection of .bib files available, including entries for all the standard TeX books and a complete bibliography for TUGboat. Nelson also provides this information page on BibTeX:
https://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/bibnet/bibtex-info.html
and a large collection of BibTeX-related tools:
https://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/software/bibtex-bibliography-tools.html

AUTHOR
Oren Patashnik, Stanford University. This man page describes the Web2c (TeX Live) version of BibTeX. Other ports of BibTeX do not have the same path searching implementation or the same command-line options.

Public discussion list and bug reports: https://lists.tug.org/biblio