checkcites.lua -- Version 1.0i from December 18, 2012. ====================================================== License ------- Copyright 2012 Enrico Gregorio, Paulo Roberto Massa Cereda - Enrico dot Gregorio at univr dot it - cereda at users dot sf dot net This script is licensed under the LaTeX Project Public License. If you want to support LaTeX development by a donation, the best way to do this is donating to the TeX Users Group. About ----- checkcites is a Lua script written for the sole purpose of detecting unused or undefined references from both LaTeX auxiliary or bibliography files. We use 'unused reference' to refer to the reference present the bibliography file -- with the '.bib' extension -- but not cited in the '.tex' file. The 'undefined reference' is exactly the opposite, that is, the items cited in the '.tex' file, but not present in the '.bib' file. The original idea came from a question posted in the TeX.sx community about how to check which bibliography entries were not used. We decided to write a script to check references. We opted for Lua, since it's a very straightforward language and it has an interpreter available on every modern TeX distribution. Installation ------------ 1. Create a new directory named 'checkcites' inside the 'scripts' directory of your TEXMF tree and copy the 'checkcites.lua' inside the new directory. In TeX Live, the new directory would be: texlive//texmf/scripts/checkcites 2. Rebuild the filename databases with the proper distro tool, e.g, running 'mktexlsr'. 3. Create a symbolic link to the newly created script inside the 'bin' directory of your TeX distro. In TeX Live, the full path is: texlive//bin/ For TeX Live: Win32: make a copy of 'runscript.exe' inside the very same location (i.e, 'bin/win32') and rename it to 'checkcites.exe'. Linux: create a symbolic link (i.e, 'ln -s') inside the 'bin' directory, targeting the script set in #1. Name it 'checkcites' and give it proper execute ('x') permission. Usage ----- The script is pretty simple to use. The only requirement is a recent TeX distribution, such as TeX Live. Then run checkcites: $ checkcites It will print the script usage. The only required argument is the '.aux' file which is generated when you compile your '.tex' file. If your main document is named 'foo.tex', you will have a 'foo.aux' file too. To run the script on that file, go with: $ checkcites foo.aux checkcites allows an additional argument that will tell it how to behave. For example $ checkcites --unused foo.aux will make the script only look for unused references in your '.bib' file. The argument order doesn't matter, you can also run $ checkcites foo.aux --unused and get the same behaviour. Similarly, you can use $ checkcites --undefined foo.aux to make the script only look for undefined references in your '.tex' file. If you want checkcites to look for both unused and undefined references, go with $ checkcites --all foo.aux If no special argument is provided, --all is set as default. Official code repository ------------------------ http://github.com/cereda/checkcites