Troubles when export to bibtex

I'm having some troubles when I export the references to bibtex format. In fact bibtex does not seem to appreciate a key starting with "_". For example you can try to add a new element on the http://www.boost.org website. Then if you export your references to bibtex, you will obtain an item like:

@misc{_boost_,
title = {Boost C++ Librairies},
url = {http://www.boost.org/},
abstract = {Boost provides free peer-reviewed portable C++ source libraries. Boost libraries are intended to be widely useful, and usable across a broad spectrum of applications.

}
},


Then if you compile on latex I obtain this bbl file:

\bibitem[_bo]{_boost_}
Boost c++ librairies.

And this error:
(./glossaire/glossaire.tex [15] [16]) (./these.bbl [17] [18]
! Missing $ inserted.
<inserted text>
$
l.4 \bibitem[_bo]{_boost_}

?


Is anyone know how to modify zotero to have no items starting with "_"?
  • up!!!

    Am I the only one experiencing this problem?
  • I just posted a similar comment in another forum. The problem is that in latex the underscore is for math-mode subscripts: hence, bib files whose cite keys contain these symbols will generate latex errors. In other words, Zotero is generating invalid bib files in its bibtex export facility; I think this is something which needs to be fixed. Meantime, you can do a global search-and-replace in a text editor, and replace the undescore by say a hyphen.
  • There is a similar problem when the BibTexKey have French typical letters like é or à. Unfortunately there is no way to specify the BibTexKey. I will try to use a text editor able to replace automatically those letters. As far as I remember, some HTML editors wer able to do so. Unfortunately my memory is not what is used to be...
  • I have this problem, too! I keep separate article/paper bibliographies as collections in Zotero and after I've added some items and start adding again to my paper, I use Zotero to export as BibTex file.

    For most of my refs this works fine, but when I included a Magazine Article that had no author (e.g. The Economist), then the bibtex key for those items began with the underscore ("_").

    LaTeX/BibTex does not like this!

    I think Zotero should simply change their separator character for the BibTex key generator. Or, e.g. if the item does not have an author, then don't begin the key with the current separator character.

    Presently I'll just manually remove the "_" from the .bib files, but I wish Zotero would do this automatically so I never have to look at or touch my .bib files ever :-).

    Thanks!
  • I also have this problem. I've been find-and-replacing "a_", "b_", "c_"... with "a", "b", "c" each library export, which is quite annoying. Also annoying is running find-and-replace on <sub> </sub> to get proper LaTeX subscript code. Would it be so hard to change the zotero-BibTex translator?
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