Make bibliography “invisible” (with bibtex)

Question

While working on a long LateX document I would like the citations to be displayed correctly, but the bibliography itself not being added to the document.

Is it possible to make the bibliography being compiled, but not producing output? (Maybe it's not even difficult, and I am just being stupid...)

Answer 1

The simplest way is to use \include and \includeonly:

\documentclass{book}
...
% \includeonly{}
\begin{document}
...<the document>...

\include{biblio}
\end{document}

The file biblio.tex will contain the commands to produce the bibliography: the thebibliography environment or the \bibliography command if you use the traditional method with BibTeX.

When you are sure about the correctness of the references, uncomment the \includeonly line.

As lockstep says, with biblatex it's sufficient not to use \printbibliography.

Answer 2

One option would be to use the comment package and to enclose the \bibliography command (in the body of your document) inside a comment environment initially deactivated; i.e., schematically to write something like

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{comment}
\includecomment{comment}
%\excludecomment{comment}

\begin{document}

\cite{key1},\cite{key2},...,\cite{keyn}

\bibliographystyle{plain}
\begin{comment}
\bibliography{biblio}
\end{comment}

\end{document}

then, process your document in the usual way: pdflatex+bibtex+pdflatex+pdflatex to get the citations and the bibliography, and then to activate the comment environment (by uncommenting the \excludecomment{comment} line and commenting out \includecomment{comment} ) and then run pdflatex one more time.

Answer 3

You can use

\printbibliography[keyword=xxx]

were "xxx" is a keyword you don't use. This way the correct files are compiled but no bibliography is added to the document.