How do I combine several tex files into one?

Question

In my paper I have several tex files, mainly produced by some other tools (.bbl by bibtex, .eps_tex by inkscape etc.).

I would like to combine them into a single tex file as required by my publisher.

If possible, I'd like to automate it, so that even if any of my references of figures changes I still have an up-to-date version of the manuscript.

Is it possible to do that in LaTeX, or are there any third-party tools for that?

Answer 1

If you need to have your bibliography in the same file as your main text, you can use the filecontents environment:

\begin{filecontents}{bibliography.bbl}
% <contents of bibliography.bbl>
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass{article} % or whatever
\begin{document}
...

When you run latex on this file, it will write a bibliography.bbl file to the same folder as the tex file is in. Note the filecontents environment comes before the document class.

In this way, you need only send one file to the publisher.

As for images, I would check the publisher requirements vis-à-vis pictures: they might require them in a particular format, but I doubt they want them all embedded in the actual file...

the filecontents package allows for more flexible use of filecontents environments.

Answer 2

@Werner recommended using one of preprocessors for merging the files. I tried a latexexpand perl script and this is what I found:

1. It works fine for plain \input macros. It requires them to located in their own lines, as the whole line with \input will be removed.
2. It does not support more complex use cases. For example it will not expand bibtex bibliographies.

I've modified the script so that it does the (2). There is no guarantee it will work with anything other than my document, though:

#!/usr/bin/perl
# - latexpand   D. Musliner University of Michigan
# Short program to expand out LaTeX \input and \include commands.
# Essentially a tiny part of 'go' hacked out.
# Removes comments as a side effect, does not deal with escaped %s.
#
# 15 Sept 1999  M. Lovell       Hewlett-Packard, Co
# Improved comment removal code.  Now handles escaped %'s.
#
#
$TEXINPUTS = $ENV{'TEXINPUTS'};
if (!$TEXINPUTS) { $TEXINPUTS = '.'; }

&scan_for_includes(shift);

#************************************************************
# - looks recursively for included & inputted files, expands.
# - note only primitive comment removal: cannot deal with escaped %s.

sub scan_for_includes
{
  local(*FILE); if (!open(FILE,$_[0]))
    { warn "WARNING: could not open input file [$_[0]]\n"; return; }
  while(<FILE>)
    {
    # comment removal
    s/^%.*\n//;
    s/([^\\])%.*\n/$1/;

    if (/\\include[{\s]+([^\001}]*)[\s}]/)
      {
        $full_filename = $1;
        if ($1 =~ m/\./)
          { $full_filename = &find_file($full_filename,$TEXINPUTS); }
        else
          { $full_filename = &find_file("$full_filename.tex",$TEXINPUTS); }
        warn "  Found include for file [$full_filename]\n";
        &scan_for_includes($full_filename);
      }
    elsif (/\\input[{\s]+([^\001}]*)[\s}]/)
      {
        $full_filename = $1;
        if ($1 =~ m/\./)
          { $full_filename = &find_file($full_filename,$TEXINPUTS); }
        else
          { $full_filename = &find_file("$full_filename.tex",$TEXINPUTS); }
        warn "  Found input for file [$full_filename]\n";
        &scan_for_includes($full_filename);
      }
    elsif (/\\bibliographystyle/) {}
    elsif (/\\bibliography/) {
        $bibfname = $_[0];
        $bibfname =~ s/.tex$//;
        $bibfname = "${bibfname}.bbl";
        &scan_for_includes($bibfname);
    }
    else { print; }
    }
}

#************************************************************
# given filename and path, return full name of file, or die if none found.

sub find_file
{
  foreach $dir (split(':',$_[1]))
    { if (-e "$dir/$_[0]") { return("$dir/$_[0]"); } }
  die "ERROR: Could not find file [$_[0]] in path [$_[1]]\n";
}

---

For the sake of completeness this is my Makefile:

TEX = latex
INKSCAPE = inkscape
documentfile = manuscript_work
finalfile = manuscript
referencefile = bibliography
figures =   \
        figures/fig1.eps \
        figures/fig2.eps \


figures_tex = $(addsuffix .eps_tex,$(basename $(figures)))

all: document

document: $(finalfile).pdf

$(finalfile).pdf: $(finalfile).ps
    ps2pdf $(finalfile).ps

$(finalfile).ps: $(finalfile).dvi
    dvips $(finalfile).dvi

$(finalfile).dvi: $(finalfile).tex
    while ($(TEX) $(finalfile) ; \
        grep -q "Rerun to get cross" $(finalfile).log ) do true ; \
    done

$(finalfile).tex: $(documentfile).tex $(figures) $(figures_tex) $(documentfile).bbl
    ./latexexpand $(documentfile).tex > $(finalfile).tex #use modified latexexpand script

figures/%.eps: figures/%.svg
    $(INKSCAPE) $< -z -C --export-eps=$@ --export-latex

$(documentfile).bbl: $(referencefile).bib
    $(TEX) $(documentfile)
    bibtex $(documentfile)

Answer 3

This is precisely the use-case for which latexpand was written. It should be able to do all this for you (if not, please report a bug).