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From: ralph@nastassia.laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Needed: tool to sort BibTeX files (Archive sites please read)
Summary: A quick and dirty method: use GNU emacs
Keywords: BibTeX, sort, GNU Emacs
Message-ID: <371@laas.laas.fr>
Date: 5 Jun 89 16:59:10 GMT
References: <23906@labrea.Stanford.EDU> <720@otc.otca.oz>
Sender: news@laas.laas.fr
Reply-To: ralph@laas.laas.fr
Organization: LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France
Lines: 25


I have had to do this in the past.  I defined a function for GNU
emacs.  On a Sun3-160 it took less than 1 minute to sort on the order
4000 references in a 1 Mbyte file.  The key(s) can be changed; for the
moment it's the reference key.  It's set up to be run in batch mode.

Here it is:

(defun sort-BibTeX ()
  (interactive)
  ; A BibTeX record entry here is defined to be:
  ; @name{key,\n...\n}$
  ; For the moment, the key is
  (sort-regexp-fields nil "^@.*{\\(.*\\),\\\n\\(^[^}].*\\\n\\)*}$" "\\1"
                      (point-min) (point-max))
  (set-visited-file-name (concat (buffer-file-name) ".sorted"))
)

Of course, if anyone makes any improvements I would be interested in
receiving them also.

Ralph P. Sobek			  Disclaimer: The above ruminations are my own.
ralph@laas.laas.fr			   Addresses are ordered by importance.
ralph@laas.uucp, or ...!uunet!mcvax!laas!ralph		If all else fails, try:
SOBEK@FRMOP11.BITNET				      sobek@eclair.Berkeley.EDU