A little Bibiliography modifier

Ah… now it’s time to add my .bib file to the LaTeX… Oops, why is the author name so long?
Have you ever had this situation? It happened to me when I compiled my thesis for the first time in LaTeX.

For my master’s thesis, I had to write a bibliography with over hundred citations. After generating the citations that I realized the bibliography alone took morethan ten pages, and yes even after reducing the font size to the smallest possible.

So, what should I do now?

I found out that the lengthiest part in the citations was the author names. Therefore, I decided to reduce them to two or three authors and manually add ‘et al.’ (which means “and others,” an abbreviation of the Latin term ‘et alia’).
Phew… it was tedious to adjust all the hundreds of citations manually. So, I decided to write code in C to resolve the problem.

It’s a simple code that reduces the authors to the given number and appends et al. to every list given a .bib file.

HOW TO

Compile the code using a C compiler
Generate the excutable file (eg .exe)
Place your .bib file in the same folder.
IMPORTANT: Rename your bib file to ref.bib
Run the program it will ask you for the number of maximum authors. Give what it asks!
Press ENTER, and take a few deep breaths……..
Your modified .bib will be generated as output.bib
Verify for errors.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
int maxauth;
char *inputf = "ref.bib";      //  input bib file
char *outputf = "output.bib";  // output bib file
FILE *inputFile, *outputFile;
char copyLine[565];
char line[512];

int main() {

 printf("\n");
    printf("                          Welcome to BibEditor                                \n");
    printf("\n\n");

    printf("BibEditor is an experimental program to limit the number of authors in the given .bib file.\n");
    printf("The program will ask you for the number of authors you want to display and simply remove all other\n");
    printf("authors and put an et.al at the tail. Simple :)\n\n");

    printf("¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯\n");
    printf("        HOW TO USE\n");
    printf("¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯\n\n");

    printf("1) Place your ref.bib file in the same folder.\n\n");

    
    printf("IMPORTANT: [ Rename it to \"ref.bib\" (without quotations) if your .bib file has a different name. ]\n\n");

    printf("2) Run the program it will ask you for the number of maximum authors. Give what it asks! \n\n");

    printf("3) Press ENTER, and take a few deep breaths ;)\n\n");

    printf("4) Your modified .bib will be generated as output.bib\n\n");

    printf("5) Verify for errors.\n\n");
   
    printf("   - Author: SOORAJ NHALOOR\n");
    printf("   - Email: soorajnhaloor123@gmail.com\n");
    printf("   - Website: nhaloorsooraj.github.io\n\n");

    printf("════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════\n");
    printf("\n\n");
    printf("\n\n");
    printf("Enter the number of maximum authors : ");
    scanf( "%d",&maxauth);
     printf("\n\n");
    printf("\n\n");
     printf("==============================================================================\n");
     printf("======================  LOGS  ================================================\n");
     printf("==============================================================================\n\n");
    inputFile = fopen(inputf, "r");    
    outputFile = fopen(outputf, "w");  

    if (inputFile == NULL || outputFile == NULL) {
        printf("Error opening files. Please read Readme.txt or see above ^\n");
        return 1;
    } else {
        char pattern[] = "author = {";  
        while (fgets(line, sizeof(line), inputFile)) {
            if (strstr(line, pattern) != NULL) {
                printf("Pattern found in this line: %s", line);
                int commaCount = 0;
                for (int i = 0; i < strlen(line); i++) {
                    if (line[i] == ',') {
                        commaCount++;
                        if (commaCount >= maxauth) {
                            copyLine[i] = line[i];
                        line[i] = '\0';


                            fprintf(outputFile, "%s %s et.al}\n",line,copyLine);
                            break;
                        } /////////////////
                      
                    }
                }
                if (commaCount < maxauth) {
                    fprintf(outputFile,"%s",line);
                }
            } else {
                fprintf(outputFile, "%s", line);  // Write unmodified line to the output file
            }
        }

        fclose(inputFile);
        fclose(outputFile);
    }

    return 0;
}

You can see more here : https://github.com/nhaloorsooraj/BibEditor

HOW TO

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