Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

bibtex 0.5.3

CRAN release: 2026-09-22

• bibtex now requires R 3.6.0 or later, which the parser already relied on, and no longer imports backports.

• read.bib() now reads BibLaTeX dates such as 2020, 2020-05, 2020/2021, 1723~ and -0044, taking the year from each, and gives the right year for non-ISO dates such as 17-05-2020 (@HughParsonage, #15; @Fifis, #56).

• read.bib() now fills in journal from a BibLaTeX journaltitle field, so @Article entries that only have journaltitle are kept (@Fifis, #57).

• read.bib() is more robust (@bastistician, #64):

  • Brace-less @Comment lines, such as @Comment my comment, are skipped and the rest of the file is read.
  • A % comment on the same line as the closing brace of an entry or a @String is ignored and the rest of the file is read.
  • A line in a braced field value that starts with @ but does not open an entry, such as a wrapped e-mail address, stays part of that field.
  • An empty file, or one holding only comments, reads as an empty result.
  • Warnings raised while parsing now reach the caller, and input the parser cannot read, such as an unreadable file, an entry or @String with no closing brace, or one delimited by parentheses, is reported as an error.
  • Errors include the parser’s message when it has one, e.g. Invalid bib file: unable to open file to read.
  • do_read_bib() gets the same improvements and returns an empty list for an empty or comment-only file.

• Snapshot tests now record the parsed entries rather than R’s printed output, so they pass on R 4.5.3 and later, including R-devel.

bibtex 0.5.2

CRAN release: 2026-02-03

Bug fix

• Fixed read.bib() silently returning empty bibentry() when entries have trailing whitespace after closing brace (#59, PR #60).

Testing

• Added snapshot test variants for R-devel to handle bibentry formatting changes from deparseLatex() updates in R 4.6.0.

Documentation

• Migrated inst/NEWS.Rd to NEWS.md.

bibtex 0.5.1

CRAN release: 2023-01-26

Bug fix

• Replaced as.personList(authors) with do.call(c, authors) as requested by CRAN (PR #52).

bibtex 0.5.0

CRAN release: 2022-09-25

New Features

• The underlying parsing logic of bibtex files has been completely rewritten (huge thank you to Diego Hernangómez (@dieghernan), PR #47)

Unit Tests

• Unit tests are now using testthat version 3 (Diego Hernangómez (@dieghernan), PR #46).

bibtex 0.4.3

Bug fixes

• Applied CRAN stabilization patches. (#31, thanks Prof. Brian Ripley!)
• Removed dependency on stringr. (#25, thanks @mllg)
• ArrangeAuthors() is now case insensitive when searching for and in an AND-joined list. (#22, thanks @katrinleinweber)
• findBibFile() now looks at inst/REFERENCES.bib in addition to REFERENCES.bib. (#19, thanks @ms609)

Documentation

• Refreshed README content. (#29).
• Updated Package Maintainer and contributors. (#30)

Deployment

• Switched CI from TravisCI to GitHub Actions. (#29)
• Added a pkgdown site for the package. (#29)

bibtex 0.4.0

CRAN release: 2014-12-31

• Removed the function yy_fatal_error which even though it was never actually called, triggered some R CMD check nuisance.
• Removed useless dependency on Rcpp which bibtex no longer uses.
• Added cite by key functionality to read.bib (pull request by Michael Koohafkan).

bibtex 0.3-5

CRAN release: 2013-02-15

• Fix for bib files with no content.

bibtex 0.3-1

• New function write.bib contributed by Renaud Gaujoux.
• Missing % in error reporting in read.bib (fix provided by Renaud Gaujoux).

bibtex 0.3-0

CRAN release: 2011-11-17

• Fixed long standing bug re backslashes.