[OS X TeX] Undated references in natbib

[Martin Steer]

As there are a number of natbib users on this list, can I ask a
question about an apparent bug?

If the following test file is run through latex, the citations come
out as:

Fielding [nda,n,n] and Fielding [??a,b] and Fielding [2005a,b]
              ^ ^

where for the first item we'd expect Fielding [nda,b,c].

I.e. natbib doesn't handle this kind of multiple citation properly if
there are alphabetic characters in the year field. Instead of ...b,c
we get the first character of the field, in this case "n" (from "nd").
The listing in the bibliography is correct, however.

What am I missing? How do you handle "no date" references with natbib,
or dates such as "ca 1980"?


% begin test.tex

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[sort]{natbib}

\begin{document}

\citet{field-1,field-2} and \citet{field-?1,field-?2} and
\citet{field05-1,field05-2}

\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliography{test}

\end{document}

% end test.tex


% begin test.bib

@Misc{field-1,
  author =	 {Fielding, Henry},
  title =	 {Undated text},
  year =	 {nd},
}

@Misc{field-2,
  author =	 {Fielding, Henry},
  title =	 {Another undated text},
  year =	 {nd},
}

@Misc{field-3,
  author =	 {Fielding, Henry},
  title =	 {Yet another undated text},
  year =	 {nd},
}


@Misc{field-?1,
  author =	 {Fielding, Henry},
  title =	 {Undated text},
  year =	 {??},
}

@Misc{field-?2,
  author =	 {Fielding, Henry},
  title =	 {Another undated text},
  year =	 {??},
}


@Misc{field05-1,
  author =	 {Fielding, Henry},
  title =	 {Dated text},
  year =	 2005,
}

@Misc{field05-2,
  author =	 {Fielding, Henry},
  title =	 {Another dated text},
  year =	 2005,
}

% end test.bib
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