1LOOKBIB(1) General Commands Manual LOOKBIB(1)
2
6 indxbib, lookbib - build inverted index for a bibliography, find refer‐
7 ences in a bibliography
8
10 indxbib database ...
11 lookbib [ -n ] database
12
14 Indxbib makes an inverted index to the named databases (or files) for
15 use by lookbib(1) and refer(1). These files contain bibliographic ref‐
16 erences (or other kinds of information) separated by blank lines.
17 A bibliographic reference is a set of lines, constituting fields of
19 bibliographic information. Each field starts on a line beginning with
20 a ``%'', followed by a key-letter, then a blank, and finally the con‐
21 tents of the field, which may continue until the next line starting
22 with ``%''.
23 Indxbib is a shell script that calls /usr/libexec/refer/mkey and
25 /usr/libexec/refer/inv. The first program, mkey, truncates words to 6
26 characters, and maps upper case to lower case. It also discards words
27 shorter than 3 characters, words among the 100 most common English
28 words, and numbers (dates) < 1900 or > 2000. These parameters can be
29 changed; see page 4 of the Refer document by Mike Lesk. The second
30 program, inv, creates an entry file (.ia), a posting file (.ib), and a
31 tag file (.ic), all in the working directory.
32 Lookbib uses an inverted index made by indxbib to find sets of biblio‐
34 graphic references. It reads keywords typed after the ``>'' prompt on
35 the terminal, and retrieves records containing all these keywords. If
36 nothing matches, nothing is returned except another ``>'' prompt.
37 Lookbib will ask if you need instructions, and will print some brief
39 information if you reply ``y''. The ``-n'' flag turns off the prompt
40 for instructions.
41 It is possible to search multiple databases, as long as they have a
43 common index made by indxbib. In that case, only the first argument
44 given to indxbib is specified to lookbib.
45 If lookbib does not find the index files (the .i[abc] files), it looks
47 for a reference file with the same name as the argument, without the
48 suffixes. It creates a file with a '.ig' suffix, suitable for use with
49 fgrep. It then uses this fgrep file to find references. This method
50 is simpler to use, but the .ig file is slower to use than the .i[abc]
51 files, and does not allow the use of multiple reference files.
52
54 x.ia, x.ib, x.ic, where x is the first argument, or if these are not
55 present, then x.ig, x
56
58 refer(1), addbib(1), sortbib(1), roffbib(1), lookbib(1)
59
61 Probably all dates should be indexed, since many disciplines refer to
62 literature written in the 1800s or earlier.
634.2 Berkeley Distribution October 22, 1996 LOOKBIB(1)