[OS X TeX] Bibtex: How to check if there's content in the stack?

[Martin Wilhelm Leidig]

Hi, Niels,

Am 2007-03-11 um 08.12 schrieb Niels KobschŠtzki:
> Is there any possibility to check if the stack has an item on top  
> and if it has it shall do a pop$, if not it just shall do nothing

No, afaik.  So better put something on the stack for safety and empty  
it if needed using stack$; that writes all remaining stack items to  
standard out, so you might get an idea what's wrong btw.

> (skip$ right?)

Yes; when using blocks you also could use just '{}', e.g.:
---
"The stack was"
swap$ empty$
   {}
   {"not" *}
if$
"empty" * top$
---
(braindead example, I know ;-)Å

> Google didn't really help and the documentation and tutorials for  
> creating own bibtex-styles is imho quite meagerÉ

Besides Oren Patashnik's own documentation (which I found is all one  
really needs) there's "BibTeX Tips and FAQ" by Michael Shell and  
David Hoadley, recently updated to V1.1; then there's "Customizing  
Bibliographic Style Files" describing the program makebst, and  
there's a quite exhaustive tutorial by Nicolay Markey named "Tame the  
BeaST".  Last but not least, if you can read German you'll find Bernd  
Raichle tutorial "EinfŸhrung in die BibTeX-Programmierung" quite  
useful.  All that can be found on CTAN -- try <http://tug.ctan.org/ 
find.html>.

If you have further BibTeX problems please contact me directly.  I'm  
hacking BibTeX styles for a couple of physics journals right now, so  
I'm in that quite a bit.  Also, my German ist better than my  
English.  ;-)Å


... mit freundlichem Gru§ aus Ladenburg:

-Moss-
-- 
Martin Wilhelm Leidig, Nadlerstr.6, 68526 Ladenburg, Deutschland
SatzTeXnik und TeXnische Beratung -- Dante e.V. #1580



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