Name

       lookbib - search bibliographic databases

Synopsis

       lookbib [-i string] [-t n] file ...

       lookbib --help

       lookbib -v
       lookbib --version

Description

       lookbib  writes  a  prompt  to  the  standard  error  stream  (unless  the standard input stream is not a
       terminal), reads from the standard input a line containing a set of keywords, searches each bibliographic
       database file for references containing those keywords, writes  any  references  found  to  the  standard
       output  stream,  and repeats this process until the end of input.  For each database file to be searched,
       if an index file.i created by indxbib(1) exists, then it will be searched instead; each index  can  cover
       multiple databases.

Options

       --help displays a usage message, while -v and --version show version information; all exit afterward.

       -i string
              When  searching  files for which no index exists, ignore the contents of fields whose names are in
              string.

       -t n   Require only the first n characters of keys to be given.  The default is 6.

Files

       file.i Index files.

See also

       “Some Applications of Inverted Indexes on the Unix System”, by M. E. Lesk, 1978, AT&T  Bell  Laboratories
       Computing Science Technical Report No. 69.

       refer(1), lkbib(1), indxbib(1)

groff 1.23.0                                       3 June 2025                                        lookbib(1)