Bib Cleaner

Bib Cleaner removes unnecessary entries from your bib files. Documentation @ https://bib-cleaner.readthedocs.io.

Use case

1. You have been writing a TeX document for a while, and adding citation entries to your .bib file. Suppose it is called master.bib and contains the following:

   % master.bib
   
   @article{citation1
   author = {Lastname1, Firstname1 and Lastname2, Firstname2},
   title = {{Title of Paper 1}},
   year = {2018}
   }
   @article{citation2
   author = {Lastname1, Firstname1 and Lastname2, Firstname2 and Lastname3, Firstname3},
   title = {{Title of Paper 2}},
   year = {2012}
   }
   @article{citation3
   author = {Lastname1, Firstname1 and Lastname2, Firstname2},
   title = {{Title of Paper 3}},
   year = {1953}
   }
   @article{citation4
   author = {Lastname1, Firstname1 and Lastname2, Firstname2},
   title = {{Title of Paper 4}},
   year = {1959}
   }
   

2. In the course of writing, some entries in your master.bib have become obsolete. You don’t use them in your TeX document anymore, which looks like this:

   % contents.tex
   
   \documentclass{article}
   \begin{document}
   
   I wished them the so long \cite{citation1}
   and thanked them for all the fish \cite{citation3}.
   
   \end{document}
   

Here citation2 and citation4 have become obsolete.

3. Of course, LaTeX compiles quite happily with these extra entries (citation2 and citation4) and excludes them from the typeset bibliography… but you know they are there.
4. You take a step back, sip some coffee, go for a walk, all the while pondering “Man, I wish I could just remove those extra bib entries”. You yearn for a world where all .bib files everywhere carry only what they have to, and no more.

I gotchu. Enter bib_cleaner.

Quick install

This should work:

$ pip install bib_cleaner

For detailed instructions, see Installation

Verify if it installed by typing the following in the command-line:

$ bib_cleaner -h

You should see the help:

usage: bib_cleaner [-h] [-t TEXFILES [TEXFILES ...]] [-o OUTPUTBIB] masterfile

Produce a minimal bib file with only the entries found in your .tex file(s)

positional arguments:
masterfile            master bib file with used and unused citations (.bib)

optional arguments:
-h, --help            show this help message and exit
-t TEXFILES [TEXFILES ...], --texfiles TEXFILES [TEXFILES ...]
                        content files to select entries from (.tex)
-o OUTPUTBIB, --outputbib OUTPUTBIB
                        output file name with extension

How to use bib_cleaner

After installation, navigate to your TeX directory try:

$ bib_cleaner master.bib

Of course, replace master.bib with the name of your bib file with obsolete bib entries. bib_cleaner will

1. automatically detect all the TeX files (.tex) in that directory and use them to determine which bib entries are obsolete.
2. create new.bib which does not have the obsolete citations.

After you run bib_cleaner for the first time, you can

1. update your TeX files to use new.bib instead of master.bib. Thereafter, any new citations added to your TeX files or addition/removal of entries from master.bib should be followed by a call to bib_cleaner. Of course, you can add it to your LaTeX makefile should you have one.
2. marvel at how much smaller new.bib. When the writing project is completed, run bib_cleaner again,once and for all and update your TeX files to use new.bib instead of master.bib.

Specify TeX files

If you only want to keep the entries used in some TeX files, specify them with:

$ bib_cleaner master.bib --texfiles chapter1.tex chapter2.tex

or:

$ bib_cleaner master.bib -t chapter1.tex chapter2.tex

Specify output file name

If you want to change the output bib file name from the default new.bib, do:

$ bib_cleaner master.bib -t chapter1.tex --outputbib chapter1.bib

or:

$ bib_cleaner master.bib -t chapter1.tex -o chapter1.bib

TODO

• Remove typically unused lines from .bib files (like file = {...} or abstract = {...})
• Detect and remove bib entries with identical tags / raise conflict
• Add tests for the command-line interface

Credits

This package was created with Cookiecutter and the audreyr/cookiecutter-pypackage project template.