.TH BIB-CHECK 1 "June 2026" "bibutils" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
bib-check \- lint a bibtex database
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B bib-check
.RI [ file " ...]"
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B bib-check
reads bibtex databases from the named files (or standard input) and
reports problems on standard output, one per line, in the form
.IR key ": " problem .
The following are detected:
.TP
.B missing required fields
Each standard entry type has a set of required fields (for an article:
author, title, journal and year; for a book: author or editor, title,
publisher and year; and so on).
Entry types with no conventional requirements, such as
.BR @misc ,
are not checked.
.TP
.B duplicate keys
Two entries sharing a citation key.
.TP
.B duplicate titles
Two entries whose titles are identical after case folding and removal
of non-alphanumeric characters \(em usually the same work entered
twice under different keys.
.TP
.B empty fields
Fields whose value is empty or only whitespace.
.SH EXIT STATUS
0 if the database is clean, 1 if any problem was found.
This makes
.B bib-check
usable as a pre-commit hook or CI gate.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.TP
.B BIBUTILS_LIB
Directory holding the shared awk library, overriding the default
search (lib/ next to the script, then /usr/local/share/bibutils).
.SH EXAMPLES
.nf
bib-check refs.bib && echo clean
.fi
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR bib-ls (1),
.BR bib-util (1),
.BR bibtex (1)