How can Vim help me remember the trailing commas in BibTeX files?

Question

I edit quite a few BibTeX files, and I regularly forget the trailing commas:

For example:

@Book{cooke2015british,
 author = {Cooke, Lez},
 title = {British Television Drama},
 publisher = {Palgrave on behalf of the British Film Institute},
 year = {2015},
 keywords = {about}
 address = {London},
 isbn = {978-1844576234}
 }

You'll see that I forgot to add the comma after keywords = {about}, which will mean that I have to spend time debugging. Is there a way Vim can make me remember? By the way, I have the bib_autocomp.vim plugin ...

Not that I know of, but you could try something like this to fix it: :%s/[^ ,]\zs\ze\n\s*[^ }]/,/. — Sato Katsura, Oct 22 '15 at 14:31

Vitor · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-28T10:55:38.917

6

Quick and dirty solution:

:match Error /^\s\+.*,\@<!\ze\n\s\+\w/

You could also create a special syntax for BibTeX files using the same pattern.

Some explanations on the used regular expression:

^\s\+ searches for indented keywords.
\ze stops the pattern matching such that the next line is not marked.
,\@<!\n searches for lines not ending with a comma.
\n\s\+\w guarantees that there is a new entry after the currently being scanned.

The same pattern can be used to jump between erroneous lines using vimgrep as following:

:vimgrep /^\s\+.*,\@<!\ze\n\s\+\w/ %

If the quickfix window does not open automatically, it can be opened using :copen. And :cnext and :cprevious can be used to jump between errors.

edited Oct 28 '15 at 10:55

answered Oct 22 '15 at 20:40

Vitor

1,742
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15

This is good! Can I somehow make it jump to the next error when I press n? – Kristian Nordestgaard Oct 25 '15 at 14:56
I've updated the answer to include what you asked for. See if it works for you. – Vitor Oct 25 '15 at 19:38

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 22 '15 at 22:33

0

One possibility is defining a .vimrc shortcut to add the missing ,

Example:

:map \q  :%s/\v([}"])(\s*\n\s*\S+\s*\=)/\1,\2/<CR>

and use \q before leaving or when debugging.

answered Oct 22 '15 at 22:33

JJoao

561
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Not working for me? I get E10: \ should be followed by /, ? or & 24,1 60%, but perhaps I am doing it wrong? – Kristian Nordestgaard Oct 25 '15 at 14:55
@KristianNordestgaard, in .vimrcwe have to remove initial ":" . Please try map \q :%s/\v([}"])(\s*\n\s*\S+\s*\=)/\1,\2/e<CR><CR> – JJoao Oct 25 '15 at 17:31

How can Vim help me remember the trailing commas in BibTeX files?

2 Answers2