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REFER(1) General Commands Manual REFER(1)
NAME
refer - preprocess bibliographic references for groff
SYNOPSIS
refer [-benCPRS] [-a n] [-c fields] [-f n] [-i fields] [-k field] [-l m,n] [-p filename]
[-s fields] [-t n] -B field.macro [file ...]
refer --help
refer -v
refer --version
DESCRIPTION
This file documents the GNU version of refer, which is part of the groff document format-
ting system. refer copies the contents of filename... to the standard output, except that
lines between .[ and .] are interpreted as citations, and lines between .R1 and .R2 are
interpreted as commands about how citations are to be processed.
Each citation specifies a reference. The citation can specify a reference that is con-
tained in a bibliographic database by giving a set of keywords that only that reference
contains. Alternatively it can specify a reference by supplying a database record in the
citation. A combination of these alternatives is also possible.
For each citation, refer can produce a mark in the text. This mark consists of some label
which can be separated from the text and from other labels in various ways. For each ref-
erence it also outputs groff commands that can be used by a macro package to produce a
formatted reference for each citation. The output of refer must therefore be processed
using a suitable macro package. The -ms and -me macros are both suitable. The commands
to format a citation's reference can be output immediately after the citation, or the ref-
erences may be accumulated, and the commands output at some later point. If the refer-
ences are accumulated, then multiple citations of the same reference will produce a single
formatted reference.
The interpretation of lines between .R1 and .R2 as commands is a new feature of GNU refer.
Documents making use of this feature can still be processed by Unix refer just by adding
the lines
.de R1
.ig R2
..
to the beginning of the document. This will cause troff to ignore everything between .R1
and .R2. The effect of some commands can also be achieved by options. These options are
supported mainly for compatibility with Unix refer. It is usually more convenient to use
commands.
refer generates .lf lines so that filenames and line numbers in messages produced by com-
mands that read refer output will be correct; it also interprets lines beginning with .lf
so that filenames and line numbers in the messages and .lf lines that it produces will be
accurate even if the input has been preprocessed by a command such as soelim(1).
OPTIONS
Whitespace is permitted between a command-line option and its argument.
Most options are equivalent to commands (for a description of these commands, see subsec-
tion "Commands" below).
-b no-label-in-text; no-label-in-reference
-e accumulate
-n no-default-database
-C compatible
-P move-punctuation
-S label "(A.n|Q) ', ' (D.y|D)"; bracket-label " (" ) "; "
-an reverse An
-cfields
capitalize fields
-fn label %n
-ifields
search-ignore fields
-k label L~%a
-kfield
label field~%a
-l label A.nD.y%a
-lm label A.n+mD.y%a
-l,n label A.nD.y-n%a
-lm,n label A.n+mD.y-n%a
-pfilename
database filename
-sspec sort spec
-tn search-truncate n
These options are equivalent to the following commands with the addition that the file-
names specified on the command line are processed as if they were arguments to the bibli-
ography command instead of in the normal way:
-B annotate X AP; no-label-in-reference
-Bfield.macro
annotate field macro; no-label-in-reference
The following options have no equivalent commands:
-v Print the version number.
-R Don't recognize lines beginning with .R1/.R2.
USAGE
Bibliographic databases
The bibliographic database is a text file consisting of records separated by one or more
blank lines. Within each record fields start with a % at the beginning of a line. Each
field has a one character name that immediately follows the %. It is best to use only up-
per and lower case letters for the names of fields. The name of the field should be fol-
lowed by exactly one space, and then by the contents of the field. Empty fields are ig-
nored. The conventional meaning of each field is as follows:
%A The name of an author. If the name contains a title such as Jr. at the end, it
should be separated from the last name by a comma. There can be multiple occur-
rences of the %A field. The order is significant. It is a good idea always to
supply an %A field or a %Q field.
%B For an article that is part of a book, the title of the book.
%C The place (city) of publication.
%D The date of publication. The year should be specified in full. If the month is
specified, the name rather than the number of the month should be used, but only
the first three letters are required. It is a good idea always to supply a %D
field; if the date is unknown, a value such as in press or unknown can be used.
%E For an article that is part of a book, the name of an editor of the book. Where
the work has editors and no authors, the names of the editors should be given as %A
fields and , (ed) or , (eds) should be appended to the last author.
%G US Government ordering number.
%I The publisher (issuer).
%J For an article in a journal, the name of the journal.
%K Keywords to be used for searching.
%L Label.
%N Journal issue number.
%O Other information. This is usually printed at the end of the reference.
%P Page number. A range of pages can be specified as m-n.
%Q The name of the author, if the author is not a person. This will only be used if
there are no %A fields. There can only be one %Q field.
%R Technical report number.
%S Series name.
%T Title. For an article in a book or journal, this should be the title of the arti-
cle.
%V Volume number of the journal or book.
%X Annotation.
For all fields except %A and %E, if there is more than one occurrence of a particular
field in a record, only the last such field will be used.
If accent strings are used, they should follow the character to be accented. This means
that the AM macro must be used with the -ms macros. Accent strings should not be quoted:
use one \ rather than two.
Citations
The format of a citation is
.[opening-text
flags keywords
fields
.]closing-text
The opening-text, closing-text, and flags components are optional. Only one of the key-
words and fields components need be specified.
The keywords component says to search the bibliographic databases for a reference that
contains all the words in keywords. It is an error if more than one reference if found.
The fields components specifies additional fields to replace or supplement those specified
in the reference. When references are being accumulated and the keywords component is
non-empty, then additional fields should be specified only on the first occasion that a
particular reference is cited, and will apply to all citations of that reference.
The opening-text and closing-text component specifies strings to be used to bracket the
label instead of the strings specified in the bracket-label command. If either of these
components is non-empty, the strings specified in the bracket-label command will not be
used; this behaviour can be altered using the [ and ] flags. Note that leading and trail-
ing spaces are significant for these components.
The flags component is a list of non-alphanumeric characters each of which modifies the
treatment of this particular citation. Unix refer will treat these flags as part of the
keywords and so will ignore them since they are non-alphanumeric. The following flags are
currently recognized:
# This says to use the label specified by the short-label command, instead of that
specified by the label command. If no short label has been specified, the normal
label will be used. Typically the short label is used with author-date labels and
consists of only the date and possibly a disambiguating letter; the # is supposed
to be suggestive of a numeric type of label.
[ Precede opening-text with the first string specified in the bracket-label command.
] Follow closing-text with the second string specified in the bracket-label command.
One advantages of using the [ and ] flags rather than including the brackets in opening-
text and closing-text is that you can change the style of bracket used in the document
just by changing the bracket-label command. Another advantage is that sorting and merging
of citations will not necessarily be inhibited if the flags are used.
If a label is to be inserted into the text, it will be attached to the line preceding the
.[ line. If there is no such line, then an extra line will be inserted before the .[ line
and a warning will be given.
There is no special notation for making a citation to multiple references. Just use a se-
quence of citations, one for each reference. Don't put anything between the citations.
The labels for all the citations will be attached to the line preceding the first cita-
tion. The labels may also be sorted or merged. See the description of the <> label ex-
pression, and of the sort-adjacent-labels and abbreviate-label-ranges command. A label
will not be merged if its citation has a non-empty opening-text or closing-text. However,
the labels for a citation using the ] flag and without any closing-text immediately fol-
lowed by a citation using the [ flag and without any opening-text may be sorted and merged
even though the first citation's opening-text or the second citation's closing-text is
non-empty. (If you wish to prevent this just make the first citation's closing-text \&.)
Commands
Commands are contained between lines starting with .R1 and .R2. Recognition of these
lines can be prevented by the -R option. When a .R1 line is recognized any accumulated
references are flushed out. Neither .R1 nor .R2 lines, nor anything between them is out-
put.
Commands are separated by newlines or ;s. # introduces a comment that extends to the end
of the line (but does not conceal the newline). Each command is broken up into words.
Words are separated by spaces or tabs. A word that begins with " extends to the next "
that is not followed by another ". If there is no such " the word extends to the end of
the line. Pairs of " in a word beginning with " collapse to a single ". Neither # nor ;
are recognized inside "s. A line can be continued by ending it with \; this works every-
where except after a #.
Each command name that is marked with * has an associated negative command no-name that
undoes the effect of name. For example, the no-sort command specifies that references
should not be sorted. The negative commands take no arguments.
In the following description each argument must be a single word; field is used for a sin-
gle upper or lower case letter naming a field; fields is used for a sequence of such let-
ters; m and n are used for a non-negative numbers; string is used for an arbitrary string;
filename is used for the name of a file.
abbreviate* fields string1 string2 string3 string4
Abbreviate the first names of fields. An initial letter will be separated from an-
other initial letter by string1, from the last name by string2, and from anything
else (such as a von or de) by string3. These default to a period followed by a
space. In a hyphenated first name, the initial of the first part of the name will
be separated from the hyphen by string4; this defaults to a period. No attempt is
made to handle any ambiguities that might result from abbreviation. Names are ab-
breviated before sorting and before label construction.
abbreviate-label-ranges* string
Three or more adjacent labels that refer to consecutive references will be abbrevi-
ated to a label consisting of the first label, followed by string followed by the
last label. This is mainly useful with numeric labels. If string is omitted it
defaults to -.
accumulate*
Accumulate references instead of writing out each reference as it is encountered.
Accumulated references will be written out whenever a reference of the form
.[
$LIST$
.]
is encountered, after all input files have been processed, and whenever .R1 line is
recognized.
annotate* field string
field is an annotation; print it at the end of the reference as a paragraph pre-
ceded by the line
.string
If string is omitted it will default to AP; if field is also omitted it will de-
fault to X. Only one field can be an annotation.
articles string...
string... are definite or indefinite articles, and should be ignored at the begin-
ning of T fields when sorting. Initially, the, a and an are recognized as arti-
cles.
bibliography filename...
Write out all the references contained in the bibliographic databases filename...
This command should come last in a .R1/.R2 block.
bracket-label string1 string2 string3
In the text, bracket each label with string1 and string2. An occurrence of string2
immediately followed by string1 will be turned into string3. The default behaviour
is
bracket-label \*([. \*(.] ", "
capitalize fields
Convert fields to caps and small caps.
compatible*
Recognize .R1 and .R2 even when followed by a character other than space or new-
line.
database filename...
Search the bibliographic databases filename... For each filename if an index file-
name.i created by indxbib(1) exists, then it will be searched instead; each index
can cover multiple databases.
date-as-label* string
string is a label expression that specifies a string with which to replace the D
field after constructing the label. See subsection "Label expressions" below for a
description of label expressions. This command is useful if you do not want ex-
plicit labels in the reference list, but instead want to handle any necessary dis-
ambiguation by qualifying the date in some way. The label used in the text would
typically be some combination of the author and date. In most cases you should
also use the no-label-in-reference command. For example,
date-as-label D.+yD.y%a*D.-y
would attach a disambiguating letter to the year part of the D field in the refer-
ence.
default-database*
The default database should be searched. This is the default behaviour, so the
negative version of this command is more useful. refer determines whether the de-
fault database should be searched on the first occasion that it needs to do a
search. Thus a no-default-database command must be given before then, in order to
be effective.
discard* fields
When the reference is read, fields should be discarded; no string definitions for
fields will be output. Initially, fields are XYZ.
et-al* string m n
Control use of et al in the evaluation of @ expressions in label expressions. If
the number of authors needed to make the author sequence unambiguous is u and the
total number of authors is t then the last t-u authors will be replaced by string
provided that t-u is not less than m and t is not less than n. The default behav-
iour is
et-al " et al" 2 3
include filename
Include filename and interpret the contents as commands.
join-authors string1 string2 string3
This says how authors should be joined together. When there are exactly two au-
thors, they will be joined with string1. When there are more than two authors, all
but the last two will be joined with string2, and the last two authors will be
joined with string3. If string3 is omitted, it will default to string1; if string2
is also omitted it will also default to string1. For example,
join-authors " and " ", " ", and "
will restore the default method for joining authors.
label-in-reference*
When outputting the reference, define the string [F to be the reference's label.
This is the default behaviour; so the negative version of this command is more use-
ful.
label-in-text*
For each reference output a label in the text. The label will be separated from
the surrounding text as described in the bracket-label command. This is the de-
fault behaviour; so the negative version of this command is more useful.
label string
string is a label expression describing how to label each reference.
separate-label-second-parts string
When merging two-part labels, separate the second part of the second label from the
first label with string. See the description of the <> label expression.
move-punctuation*
In the text, move any punctuation at the end of line past the label. It is usually
a good idea to give this command unless you are using superscripted numbers as la-
bels.
reverse* string
Reverse the fields whose names are in string. Each field name can be followed by a
number which says how many such fields should be reversed. If no number is given
for a field, all such fields will be reversed.
search-ignore* fields
While searching for keys in databases for which no index exists, ignore the con-
tents of fields. Initially, fields XYZ are ignored.
search-truncate* n
Only require the first n characters of keys to be given. In effect when searching
for a given key words in the database are truncated to the maximum of n and the
length of the key. Initially n is 6.
short-label* string
string is a label expression that specifies an alternative (usually shorter) style
of label. This is used when the # flag is given in the citation. When using au-
thor-date style labels, the identity of the author or authors is sometimes clear
from the context, and so it may be desirable to omit the author or authors from the
label. The short-label command will typically be used to specify a label contain-
ing just a date and possibly a disambiguating letter.
sort* string
Sort references according to string. References will automatically be accumulated.
string should be a list of field names, each followed by a number, indicating how
many fields with the name should be used for sorting. + can be used to indicate
that all the fields with the name should be used. Also . can be used to indicate
the references should be sorted using the (tentative) label. (Subsection "Label
expressions" below describes the concept of a tentative label.)
sort-adjacent-labels*
Sort labels that are adjacent in the text according to their position in the refer-
ence list. This command should usually be given if the abbreviate-label-ranges
command has been given, or if the label expression contains a <> expression. This
will have no effect unless references are being accumulated.
Label expressions
Label expressions can be evaluated both normally and tentatively. The result of normal
evaluation is used for output. The result of tentative evaluation, called the tentative
label, is used to gather the information that normal evaluation needs to disambiguate the
label. Label expressions specified by the date-as-label and short-label commands are not
evaluated tentatively. Normal and tentative evaluation are the same for all types of ex-
pression other than @, *, and % expressions. The description below applies to normal
evaluation, except where otherwise specified.
field
field n
The n-th part of field. If n is omitted, it defaults to 1.
'string'
The characters in string literally.
@ All the authors joined as specified by the join-authors command. The whole of each
author's name will be used. However, if the references are sorted by author (that
is the sort specification starts with A+), then authors last names will be used in-
stead, provided that this does not introduce ambiguity, and also an initial subse-
quence of the authors may be used instead of all the authors, again provided that
this does not introduce ambiguity. The use of only the last name for the i-th au-
thor of some reference is considered to be ambiguous if there is some other refer-
ence, such that the first i-1 authors of the references are the same, the i-th au-
thors are not the same, but the i-th authors last names are the same. A proper
initial subsequence of the sequence of authors for some reference is considered to
be ambiguous if there is a reference with some other sequence of authors which also
has that subsequence as a proper initial subsequence. When an initial subsequence
of authors is used, the remaining authors are replaced by the string specified by
the et-al command; this command may also specify additional requirements that must
be met before an initial subsequence can be used. @ tentatively evaluates to a
canonical representation of the authors, such that authors that compare equally for
sorting purpose will have the same representation.
%n
%a
%A
%i
%I The serial number of the reference formatted according to the character following
the %. The serial number of a reference is 1 plus the number of earlier references
with same tentative label as this reference. These expressions tentatively evalu-
ate to an empty string.
expr* If there is another reference with the same tentative label as this reference, then
expr, otherwise an empty string. It tentatively evaluates to an empty string.
expr+n
expr-n The first (+) or last (-) n upper or lower case letters or digits of expr. Troff
special characters (such as \('a) count as a single letter. Accent strings are re-
tained but do not count towards the total.
expr.l expr converted to lowercase.
expr.u expr converted to uppercase.
expr.c expr converted to caps and small caps.
expr.r expr reversed so that the last name is first.
expr.a expr with first names abbreviated. Note that fields specified in the abbreviate
command are abbreviated before any labels are evaluated. Thus .a is useful only
when you want a field to be abbreviated in a label but not in a reference.
expr.y The year part of expr.
expr.+y
The part of expr before the year, or the whole of expr if it does not contain a
year.
expr.-y
The part of expr after the year, or an empty string if expr does not contain a
year.
expr.n The last name part of expr.
expr1~expr2
expr1 except that if the last character of expr1 is - then it will be replaced by
expr2.
expr1 expr2
The concatenation of expr1 and expr2.
expr1|expr2
If expr1 is non-empty then expr1 otherwise expr2.
expr1&expr2
If expr1 is non-empty then expr2 otherwise an empty string.
expr1?expr2:expr3
If expr1 is non-empty then expr2 otherwise expr3.
<expr> The label is in two parts, which are separated by expr. Two adjacent two-part la-
bels which have the same first part will be merged by appending the second part of
the second label onto the first label separated by the string specified in the sep-
arate-label-second-parts command (initially, a comma followed by a space); the re-
sulting label will also be a two-part label with the same first part as before
merging, and so additional labels can be merged into it. Note that it is permissi-
ble for the first part to be empty; this maybe desirable for expressions used in
the short-label command.
(expr) The same as expr. Used for grouping.
The above expressions are listed in order of precedence (highest first); & and | have the
same precedence.
Macro interface
Each reference starts with a call to the macro ]-. The string [F will be defined to be
the label for this reference, unless the no-label-in-reference command has been given.
There then follows a series of string definitions, one for each field: string [X corre-
sponds to field X. The number register [P is set to 1 if the P field contains a range of
pages. The [T, [A and [O number registers are set to 1 according as the T, A and O fields
end with one of the characters .?!. The [E number register will be set to 1 if the [E
string contains more than one name. The reference is followed by a call to the ][ macro.
The first argument to this macro gives a number representing the type of the reference.
If a reference contains a J field, it will be classified as type 1, otherwise if it con-
tains a B field, it will type 3, otherwise if it contains a G or R field it will be
type 4, otherwise if it contains an I field it will be type 2, otherwise it will be
type 0. The second argument is a symbolic name for the type: other, journal-article,
book, article-in-book or tech-report. Groups of references that have been accumulated or
are produced by the bibliography command are preceded by a call to the ]< macro and fol-
lowed by a call to the ]> macro.
FILES
/usr/dict/papers/Ind
Default database.
file.i Index files.
refer uses temporary files. See the groff(1) man page for details where such files are
created.
ENVIRONMENT
REFER If set, overrides the default database.
SEE ALSO
indxbib(1), lookbib(1), lkbib(1)
BUGS
In label expressions, <> expressions are ignored inside .char expressions.
groff 1.22.4 23 March 2022 REFER(1)
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