BibTex::Entry.to_citeproc unable to be processed by citeproc-ruby about bibtex-ruby HOT 5 CLOSED

Matt!

When you parse BibTeX entries the names will be parsed by default; since you are creating the names from a hash, though, this doesn't happen automatically. Observe (working with your exampe):

> bib.to_citeproc['author']
=> "Ruby, Sam and Thomas, Dave, and Hansson, David Heinemeier"
> bib.parse_names
> bib.to_citeproc['author']
=> [{"family"=>"Ruby", "given"=>"Sam"}, {"family"=>"Thomas", "given"=>"Dave"}, {"family"=>"Hansson", "given"=>"David Heinemeier"}]

Once you've parsed the names, the citeproc processor can work with the values:

> CiteProc.process bib.to_citeproc, :style => :mla
=> "Ruby, Sam, Dave Thomas, and David Heinemeier Hansson. Agile Web Development with Rails. 2009."
> CiteProc.process bib.to_citeproc, :style => :mla, :mode => :citation
=> ["(Ruby, Thomas & Hansson)"]

from bibtex-ruby.

We should probably have #to_citeproc enforce name parsing; I'll include that with 2.0.1 which we'll push in the next couple of days.

from bibtex-ruby.

Ah! That makes sense. Thanks for the quick reply.

from bibtex-ruby.

One more question: This works great in a 1.9.2 irb session, but when running in a 1.9.2 and rails 3.1 console I get the following error and I am not sure how to proceed. Any help will be appreciated. (This is directly after the call to parse_names)

SystemStackError: stack level too deep
from /Users/mattsmith/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p290/lib/ruby/1.9.1/forwardable.rb:185

from bibtex-ruby.

Matt,

thanks for reporting this issue. It quite clearly happens somewhere in the racc parser; to reproduce you can run

BibTeX::NameParser.new.parse('Sebastian Melmoth')

or, indeed, any name, and it will fail. The parse method calls the lexical analysis (which works, as you can try to call #scan directly with the name) followed by racc's #do_parse – that's where the error occurs.

As for debugging, we will have to look at the Racc module that ships with Ruby; or try to get at it from the other direction and find out what modifications Rails makes that may cause the error.

In any case, that's something we must figure out, as it's not acceptable for the name parser not to work with rails. I'll open a separate issue for this, please report back your findings if you're debugging this further!

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