Recfile Bibliography for TeX

2 min read · data database recfiles tex

Store your bibliography in a recfile database, then extract any part with make.

For example, you could store books like this in bibliography.rec:

 1%rec: book
 2%key: slug
 3
 4slug: thinkingexperience
 5author: H. H. Price
 6title: Thinking and Experience
 7year: 1953
 8publisher: Harvard University Press, Cambridge
 9
10slug: inventingrightwrong
11author: John Leslie Mackie
12title: Inventing Right and Wrong
13year: 1997
14publisher: Penguin Books, England

Run make book to extract book.bib, ready for LaTeX to use:

 1@book{thinkingexperience,
 2   author = {H. H. Price},
 3   title = {Thinking and Experience},
 4   year = {1953},
 5   publisher = {Harvard University Press, Cambridge},
 6}
 7
 8@book{inventingrightwrong,
 9   author = {John Leslie Mackie},
10   title = {Inventing Right and Wrong},
11   year = {1997},
12   publisher = {Penguin Books, England},
13}

The makefile syntax is just a few lines (though admittedly employs some garbled shell-crud):

1bibs != grep -Po '%rec: \K.*' bibliography.rec
2bibfiles = $(patsubst %, %.bib, $(bibs))
3
4$(bibfiles): %.bib: bibliography.rec
5	recsel $< -t $(basename $@) |\
6		sed 's/slug: \(.*\)/@$(basename $@){\1,/g' |\
7		sed 's/^\(\b.*\b\): \(.*\)/   \1 = {\2},/gI' |\
8		sed 's/^$$/}\n/g' > $@
9		echo '}' >> $@

Here's a longer bibliography.rec file, which can also produce article.bib:

 1%rec: book
 2%key: slug
 3%type: year int
 4%constraint: year > -2000
 5%sort: year month
 6
 7slug: thinkingexperience
 8author: H. H. Price
 9title: Thinking and Experience
10year: 1953
11publisher: Harvard University Press, Cambridge
12
13slug: inventingrightwrong
14author: John Leslie Mackie
15title: Inventing Right and Wrong
16year: 1997
17publisher: Penguin Books, England
18
19slug: metaphysicscontemporaryintro
20author: Michael J. Loux
21title: Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction
22year: 1998
23publisher: Routledge, London
24
25slug: pluralityworlds
26author: David Lewis
27title: On the Plurality of Worlds
28publisher: Blackwell Publishing, Oxford
29year: 2001
30
31%rec: article
32%key: slug
33%sort: year month
34
35slug: genuinerealisttheory
36author: John Divers
37title: A Genuine Realist Theory of Advanced Modalizing
38year: 1999
39pages: 217–240
40month: april
41journaltitle: Mind
42uri: https://academic.oup.com/mind/article-abstract/108/430/217/975258?redirectedFrom=fulltext
43volume: 108
44publisher: Harvard University Press, Cambridge
45
46slug: twokindsmentalrealism
47author: Tam\'{a}s Demeter
48title: Two Kinds of Mental Realism
49year: 2009
50pages: 40:59-71
51uri: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tamas_Demeter2/publication/41554923_Two_Kinds_of_Mental_Realism/links/0deec53247f5a4ae21000000.pdf
52month: august
53journaltitle: Journal for General Philosophy of Science
54volume: 30
55publisher: Harvard University Press, Cambridge