/u/sy/beebe/tex/bibindex/2-4/README, Tue Jun  1 17:00:51 1993
Edit by Nelson H. F. Beebe <beebe@plot79.math.utah.edu>

This directory contains bibindex and biblook, programs for fast lookup
in BibTeX bibliography data bases.  They were written by Jeff
Erickson, now at the University of California, Berkeley.

bibindex converts a .bib file to a .bix file, which is a compact
binary representation of the .bib file containing hash tables for fast
lookup, as well as byte offset positions into the corresponding .bib
file.

biblook provides an interactive lookup facility using the .bix and
.bib files.  It verifies that the file version number and bibindex
version number match its own values, and also compares the file time
stamps so that it can detect whether the .bix file is out-of-date with
respect to the .bib file.  In either case, execution terminates.

biblook may provide a more convenient, and faster, way of searching
.bib files than text editors or pattern search utilities like the grep
programs, particularly since it supports boolean operations between
pairs of patterns.

Both programs are documented in UNIX man pages, and the *.txt files
are the output of nroff+col processing of the *.man files, so that
documentation can read even if nroff is unavailable (e.g. non-UNIX
systems, or UNIX systems where it is an extra-cost option).

The programs so far run only under UNIX.  Plans are to investigate the
possibility of making them work on other operating systems.

For very large bibliography files, it may be necessary to change the
type Index_t in biblook.h from "unsigned short" to "unsigned int".
The choice in version 2.4 and earlier of "unsigned short" is suitable
for the SIGGRAPH and TeX User Group bibliography collections
(SIGGRAPH: 6.7MB with 15,400 entries; TUG: 3.9MB with 14,600 entries).
as of June 1993.  Using "unsigned int" increases the size of the .bix
files by 55% (TUG) to 68% (SIGGRAPH).

Author of README and *.man files:
	Nelson H. F. Beebe
	Center for Scientific Computing
	Department of Mathematics
	University of Utah
	Salt Lake City, UT 84112
	USA
	Email: beebe@math.utah.edu (Internet)