BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Date in Parentheses with "plain" BibTeX style

[alex.blackbit]

Hi,

I am in the process of modifying plain.bst for my needs.
The change I want to achieve is to have the date of a publication in parentheses.
I read the available documentation and some random websites, but obviously I don't get the concept of this "unnamed language".

I tried with the following patch to plain.bst:

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$ diff -u plain.bst.backup sozsbg.bst 
--- plain.bst.backup	2011-09-16 16:32:21.979569012 +0200
+++ sozsbg.bst	2011-09-27 13:50:58.339572761 +0200
@@ -272,7 +272,7 @@
       if$
     }
     { month empty$
-        'year
+        { " (" * year * ")" }
         { month " " * year * }
       if$
     }
$

This does not what I want. The ')' comes after the ','.

It would be very nice if someone who understands bibtex .bst files better than me could correct my patch, to have the year of a publication in parentheses.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Example .tex, .bib files are attached.
I couldn't upload the .bst file ("The extension bst is not allowed").
In case anyone wants a complete .bst file in addition to the patch, I'll post it inline.

[josephwright]

In the first instance, try

Code: Select all

{ "(" year * ")" * }

BibTeX uses a stack language, which means you first add '(' and the year to the stack, then concatenate them, then add ')' to the stack and then concatenate that with the year part.

[alex.blackbit]

that works like a charm.
thanks a lot for your time.

the next task for me will be to have the following for a book:

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address: publisher

instead of

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publisher, address

i already reversed the order, that was easy, i now have

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address, publisher

afaics the ',' is caused by the output function which calls output.nonnull.
any idea on what i can do to get

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address: publisher

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$ diff -u plain.bst.backup sozsbg.bst
--- plain.bst.backup	2011-09-16 16:32:21.979569012 +0200
+++ sozsbg.bst	2011-09-27 17:04:03.597708012 +0200
@@ -567,21 +567,21 @@
     }
   if$
   new.block
+  format.date "year" output.check
   format.btitle "title" output.check
   crossref missing$
     { format.bvolume output
       new.block
       format.number.series output
       new.sentence
-      publisher "publisher" output.check
       address output
+      publisher "publisher" output.check
     }
     { new.block
       format.book.crossref output.nonnull
     }
   if$
   format.edition output
-  format.date "year" output.check
   new.block
   note output
   fin.entry
$

please ignore the moved "year", that's an unrelated change.

Again, thanks in advance.
The help is very much appreciated.