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 formatting system. refer copies the contents of file-
name... 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 refer-
ence that is contained in a bibliographic database by giving a set of
keywords that only that reference contains. Alternatively it can spec-
ify a reference by supplying a database record in the citation. A com-
bination 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 reference 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 references may be accumu-
lated, and the commands output at some later point. If the references
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 ev-
erything between .R1 and .R2. The effect of some commands can also be
achieved by options. These options are supported mainly for compati-
bility with Unix refer. It is usually more convenient to use commands.
refer generates .lf lines so that filenames and line numbers in mes-
sages produced by commands 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 subsection “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 addi-
tion that the filenames specified on the command line are processed as
if they were arguments to the bibliography 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 sepa-
rated 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 upper and lower
case letters for the names of fields. The name of the field should be
followed by exactly one space, and then by the contents of the field.
Empty fields are ignored. 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 occurrences 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 article.
%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 ac-
cented. 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 keywords 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 supple-
ment those specified in the reference. When references are being accu-
mulated and the keywords component is non-empty, then additional fields
should be specified only on the first occasion that a particular refer-
ence 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 trailing 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 la-
bel has been specified, the normal label will be used. Typi-
cally the short label is used with author-date labels and con-
sists 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-la-
bel command. Another advantage is that sorting and merging of cita-
tions 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 refer-
ences. Just use a sequence of citations, one for each reference.
Don't put anything between the citations. The labels for all the cita-
tions will be attached to the line preceding the first citation. The
labels may also be sorted or merged. See the description of the <> la-
bel expression, 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 followed 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. Recog-
nition 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 output.
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 fol-
lowed 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 sin-
gle ". Neither # nor ; are recognized inside "s. A line can be con-
tinued by ending it with \; this works everywhere except after a #.
Each command name that is marked with * has an associated negative com-
mand 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 single upper or lower case letter naming a field; fields
is used for a sequence of such letters; m and n are used for a non-neg-
ative 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 another 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 abbreviated before sorting
and before label construction.
abbreviate-label-ranges* string
Three or more adjacent labels that refer to consecutive refer-
ences will be abbreviated to a label consisting of the first la-
bel, followed by string followed by the last label. This is
mainly useful with numeric labels. If string is omitted it de-
faults 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 preceded by the line
.string
If string is omitted it will default to AP; if field is also
omitted it will default to X. Only one field can be an annota-
tion.
articles string...
string... are definite or indefinite articles, and should be ig-
nored at the beginning of T fields when sorting. Initially,
the, a and an are recognized as articles.
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 newline.
database filename...
Search the bibliographic databases filename... For each file-
name if an index filename.i created by indxbib(1) exists, then
it will be searched instead; each index can cover multiple data-
bases.
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 sub-
section “Label expressions” below for a description of label ex-
pressions. This command is useful if you do not want explicit
labels in the reference list, but instead want to handle any
necessary disambiguation 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 reference.
default-database*
The default database should be searched. This is the default
behaviour, so the negative version of this command is more use-
ful. refer determines whether the default 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 de-
fault behaviour 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 authors, 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 nega-
tive version of this command is more useful.
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 default behaviour; so the
negative version of this command is more useful.
label string
string is a label expression describing how to label each refer-
ence.
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 descrip-
tion 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 labels.
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 contents of fields. Initially, fields XYZ are ig-
nored.
search-truncate* n
Only require the first n characters of keys to be given. In ef-
fect when searching for a given key words in the database are
truncated to the maximum of n and the length of the key. Ini-
tially n is 6.
short-label* string
string is a label expression that specifies an alternative (usu-
ally shorter) style of label. This is used when the # flag is
given in the citation. When using author-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 au-
thors from the label. The short-label command will typically be
used to specify a label containing just a date and possibly a
disambiguating letter.
sort* string
Sort references according to string. References will automati-
cally 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 (tenta-
tive) 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 po-
sition in the reference 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 tenta-
tive evaluation, called the tentative label, is used to gather the in-
formation that normal evaluation needs to disambiguate the label. La-
bel 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 expression other than @, *, and % expressions.
The description below applies to normal evaluation, except where other-
wise 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 instead,
provided that this does not introduce ambiguity, and also an
initial subsequence of the authors may be used instead of all
the authors, again provided that this does not introduce ambigu-
ity. The use of only the last name for the i-th author of some
reference is considered to be ambiguous if there is some other
reference, such that the first i-1 authors of the references are
the same, the i-th authors are not the same, but the i-th au-
thors 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 sub-
sequence. 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 require-
ments 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 evaluate
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 tenta-
tively evaluates to an empty string.
expr+n
expr-n The first (+) or last (-) n upper or lower case letters or dig-
its of expr. Troff special characters (such as \('a) count as a
single letter. Accent strings are retained but do not count to-
wards 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 ad-
jacent two-part labels 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 separate-
label-second-parts command (initially, a comma followed by a
space); the resulting 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 permissible 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 corresponds 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 num-
ber 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 ref-
erence. If a reference contains a J field, it will be classified as
type 1, otherwise if it contains a B field, it will type 3, otherwise
if it contains a G or R field it will be type 4, otherwise if it con-
tains 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-arti-
cle, 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 followed 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 expres-
sions.
groff 1.22.4 7 March 2023 REFER(1)
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