BIBTEX(1)

📦
version 2026.20260303.78225 · 6 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 BIBTEX(1) — bestie, we're building your bibliography 💖

okay so real talk: this is the Web2C 2026 era version of bibtex, and she's here to make a bibliography for (La)TeX. no cap, she's been doing this since forever and she still eats. ✨

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

bibtex [-min-crossrefs=number] [-terse] auxname[.aux]

bestie that's it, that's the whole summoning ritual 🫶

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so picture this: BibTeX reads the top-level auxiliary (.aux) file called auxname — the one that got output during (typically) the running of latex(1) or tex(1) — and then she creates a bibliography (.bbl) file that gets incorporated into your document on subsequent runs of LaTeX or TeX. it's giving pipeline. it's giving teamwork. 💅

the way that BibTeX looks up stuff: she goes into the bibliographic database (.bib) files that you specified with the \bibliography command, and she finds the entries you specified with the \cite and \nocite commands in your LaTeX or TeX source file. then she formats all the info from those entries according to the instructions in a bibliography style (.bst) file (which you specified with the \bibliographystyle command), and she outputs the results to the .bbl file. main character energy, honestly. 👑

ngl, the LaTeX manual is where you find out what a LaTeX source file has to contain for BibTeX to work with it. and Appendix B of that manual describes the format of the .bib files. so if you're confused, that's your girl. 📖

also the short BibTeXing (aka btxdoc) document describes extensions and details of this format, plus gives other useful hints for using BibTeX. lowkey a must-read. ⭐

and here's a fun one: BibTeX can also be used with plain TeX, via \input btxmac — the interface is essentially the same as LaTeX. the support is included in eplain(1), and the Eplain manual explains the usage, which is essentially the same as in LaTeX: https://tug.org/eplain/doc/eplain.html#Citations 🌈

💅 OPTIONS 💅

see tex(1) for details of command-line parsing. (yes queen, that's where the parsing lore lives.)

  • -min-crossrefs=number — this defines the minimum number of crossref required for automatic inclusion of the crossref base entry in the citation list. the default is two. 🎀
okay so important diva behavior alert: if you want to avoid these automatic inclusions altogether, give this option a sufficiently large number, AND be sure to remove any previous .aux and .bbl files. otherwise the option may appear to have no effect, since BibTeX will have added the citation for the base entry to the .aux file, and nothing will remove it. so like… clean up after yourself bestie 😭
  • -terse — with this, BibTeX operates silently. without it, a banner and progress reports are printed on stdout. (some of us love the chatter, some of us need quiet study time 🙈)

the standard -help and -version options are also supported. fyi.

🦋 ENVIRONMENT 🦋

BibTeX searches the directories in the path defined by the BSTINPUTS environment variable for .bst files. if BSTINPUTS is not set, she uses the system default. for .bib files, she uses the BIBINPUTS environment variable if that is set, otherwise the default. see tex(1) for the details of the searching. 🧚

if the environment variable TEXMFOUTPUT is set, BibTeX attempts to put its output files in it, if they cannot be put in the current directory. again, see tex(1). and note: no special searching is done for the .aux file. periodt. 💜

🍓 FILES 🍓

  • *.bst — bibliography style files.
  • btxdoc.tex — BibTeXing — documentation for BibTeX users. 📚
  • btxhak.tex — Designing BibTeX Styles — documentation for .bst writers.
  • btxdoc.bib — database file for those two documents.
  • xampl.bib — database file giving examples of all standard entry types.
  • btxbst.doc — template file and documentation for the standard styles.
  • btxmac.tex — BibTeX for plain TeX.

all those files should be available somewhere on your system, no worries. and running texdoc btxdoc (or btxhak) may display the above documents. slay. ✨

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

latex(1), eplain(1), tex(1).

Leslie Lamport, LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, Addison-Wesley.

Bibliography support in plain TeX: https://tug.org/eplain/doc/eplain.html#Citations

BibTeX chapter in the Web2c manual: https://tug.org/texinfohtml/web2c.html#BibTeX

Typeset source code for BibTeX: https://ctan.org/pkg/knuth-pdf

and okay big shoutout moment: thanks to Nelson Beebe, the University of Utah has a vast collection of .bib files available, including entries for all the standard TeX books and a complete bibliography for TUGboat. Nelson also provides this information page on BibTeX: https://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/bibnet/bibtex-info.html — and a large collection of BibTeX-related tools: https://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/software/bibtex-bibliography-tools.html 🌟

💖 AUTHOR 💖

Oren Patashnik, Stanford University. this man page describes the Web2c (TeX Live) version of BibTeX. other ports of BibTeX do not have the same path searching implementation or the same command-line options — so like, don't get it twisted. 💀

public discussion list and bug reports: https://lists.tug.org/biblio 🫶

okay bestie that's the whole thing 💅 this was written for bibtex 0.99e, dated 15 January 2026, and it's the Web2C 2026 flavor — go cite something iconic, you've got this 💖✨🎀

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