How to cite [1-2] using \usepackage{cite}?

Question

When I make a citation like \cite{a,b} the result is [a,b]. However, how can I make the following command \cite{a,b} produce the citation [1-2]?

This same question was answered for the natbib package in: Cite like [1-2] instead of [1, 2]

Answer 1

You can use \renewcommand\citepunct{-} from the cite package. It replaces all commas by -. But this would be weird if you have more than 2 citations in your \cite command (if you cite reference 1 and reference 3, you obtain [1-3] which reads: reference 1 to reference 3, with reference 2 included).

In the below code, the \usepackage{filecontents} can be omitted in recent LaTeX versions (eg 2022 version).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{bibliotest.bib}
  @book{Knu86,
    author = {Knuth, Donald E.},
    year = {1986},
    title = {The \TeX book},
  }
@book{Lam86,
    title = {LaTeX: a document preparation system},
    author = {Lamport, Leslie},
    year = {1986},
  }
\end{filecontents}
\usepackage{cite}
\renewcommand\citepunct{-}
\begin{document}
\cite{Knu86,Lam86}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{bibliotest}
\end{document}