How to remove 'URL' prefixed before the URL in bibliography

Question

I had to create my own bibliography style to format my .bib database using custom-bib and an external language file.

I have a couple of problems left, one is that when I have an entry with a URL, the style inserts the text 'URL' before the URL so it looks like e.g.:

URL https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/ask.

Is there an easy way to edit the .bst file to remove the prefix 'URL'?

The .bst file has the following function:

FUNCTION {write.url}

{

  url

  duplicate$ empty$

   { pop$ }

   { "\newline\urlprefix\url{" swap$ * "}" * write$ newline$ 

}

I'm using LyX and I'm not a programmer so if it gets too hairy it's probably not worth it.

Answer 1

Is there an easy way to edit the .bst file to remove the prefix 'URL'?

Good news: You needn't edit your bespoke bibliography style file. It suffices to issue the instruction

\def\urlprefix{}

somewhere in the preamble. After making this change, be sure to re-run LaTeX, BibTeX, and LaTeX twice more to fully propagate the change.

---

If you wanted to edit the bst file, you could proceed as follows: Open the bst file in an editor and locate the function format.url. It should look like this:

FUNCTION {format.url}
{ url empty$
    { "" }
    { "\urlprefix\url{" url * "}" * }
  if$
}

Delete the substring \urlprefix. Then, save the bst file and rerun BibTeX and LaTeX. If, instead, the makebst utility created a function called write.url, simply delete the substring \urlprefix from that function.