Monday, December 8, 2008

How to run BibTeX by hand

Normally when you use LATEX, you have to run
latex file
a couple of times, where file.tex is your .tex file. Now, you need to run bibtex too. The normal
sequence is:
latex file
bibtex file - give the name of your .tex file here.
latex file
latex file


I use a makefile (/home/mackay/tex/Makefile) to run BibTeX and LATEX at the appropriate times. After bibtex runs, and after latex runs for the third time, see if there are any error messages. The most common causes of errors are: incorrectly formatted .bib entries in the .bib file, and incorrect \cite commands in the .tex file. Sometimes when you fix an error, LATEX remains confused. If so, give LATEX a fresh start by removing the .bbl and .aux files created by BibTeX and LATEX.

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