bibL 1.0.4

A minimalistic bibtex linter

bibL

bibL is a minimalistic linter (style checker) for BibTeX files. bibL does not come with its own BibTeX parser, but leverages the pybtex parser.

Installation

pip install bibl

Usage

Run bibl on your BibTeX files with the following command

bibl lint bibliography1.bib bibliography2.bib ... 

or as a python module with

python -m bibl lint bibliography1.bib bibliography2.bib ... 

bibl will check these files for a variety of style issues and deviations from the BibTeX spec (http://www.bibtex.org/Format/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BibTeX). Each possible type of issue is formulated as a rule. Each rule is identified by a unique code. Some examples of rules are

Rule ID	Rule description
D00	Entry not in alphabetical order by ke
T00	Non-ascii character
E00	Keys of published works should have format AuthorYEARa
E06	Incorrect doi format
T01	Non-standard whitespace at beginning of line (indents should be 4 spaces)
M01ArticleYear	Missing required field year for entry type article
...	...

This link provides a list of all available rules

The first character of a rule id refers to a rules category, e.g. E for issues with entry values, T for textual issues with the .bib file, etc. You can specify which rules to check by using --select or --ignore. Wildcards are allowed. --select will only enable the specified rules, disabling all other rules, while --ignore will disable all rules except the ones specified. --select and --ignore may not be specified simultaneously.

bibl --select "D*,E06,T01" lint bibliography.lint

will only check all rules starting with D, rule E06 and rule T01

bibl --ignore "D*,E06,T01" lint bibliography.lint

will check all rules except all rules starting with D, rule E06 and rule T01

Configuration

Aside from --select and --ignore, other configuration options can be provided via the cli, like --max-line-length to specify the line length for which an issue should be reported if exceeded. See below for a full list.

Configuration can also be specified in a yaml format configuration file, provided by the --config option. If no configuration file is provided and a .bibl.yml file is present in the current working directory, this file will be used as a configuration file. Command line option configuration will override configuration provided by a file. See the default configuration .bibl.yml for all values that can be overwritten in a configuration file.

Some rules, like the various M01*, M02* and U01* rules, are procedurally generated based on the type_spec setting. This setting specifies which entry and field types should be present and can be modified to more easily ignore generated rules for specific entry types or fields, or to add custom fields or entry types for which warnings should be given while linting.

CLI

Usage: bibl [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  -c, --config TEXT          Custom configuration file path.
  --select TEXT              Comma separated list of enabled rules, all other
                             rules will be disabled.

  --ignore TEXT              Comma separated list of disabled rules, all other
                             rules will be enabled.

  --indent-spaces INTEGER    Number of trailing whitespaces for indented line,
                             used by TO1.

  --max-line-length INTEGER  Max line length before wrap recommended, used by
                             T03.

  --abbreviation-dot         Abbreviate middle names with dot.
  --help                     Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  lint          Lint a BibTeX bibliography file.
  list-all      Show all available rules.
  list-enabled  Show all rules enabled by the configuration.
  version       Show the package version.

Usage: bibl lint [OPTIONS] [BIBLIOGRAPHY]...

  Lint a BibTeX bibliography file.

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Usage: bibl list-all [OPTIONS]

  Show all available rules.

Options:
  -m      Format rules as markdown table.
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Usage: bibl list-enabled [OPTIONS]

  Show all rules enabled by the configuration.

Options:
  -m      Format rules as markdown table.
  --help  Show this message and exit.