How to use a ~ in the path to my .bib file

Question

It seems from the comments in this answer (Can I have a path argument that contains spaces?) that there is not a clear consensus on the use of ~ in the bibliography path.

For me this would be very useful, since I have different home directory names at work and at home, and it saves me forgetting why my bibliography is not working each time I change.

The comment suggesting using \string~ seems to work for me, and just using ~ has not (though someone else commented that this had been fine for them).

So is there a standard here, or does one just have to try a sequence of things and see which works.

In case people suggest the use of ../, this would be okay, but not quite as good, since just using ~ would save me having to edit my template at all.

Why not put your .bib files in your local texmf folder: ~/texmf/bibtex/bib and then they will be found automatically. (i.e. you don't need to state the full path, just the .bib file name in your source document.) — Alan Munn, Jul 20 '13 at 16:07
@AlanMunn Okay, it appears that I was missing that basic piece of knowledge (i.e. that one could have local texmf folders). — Joe Tait, Jul 20 '13 at 16:39
There is one assumed to exist in TeXLive by default: on Linux systems it is ~/texmf and on a Mac ~/Library/texmf. It also needs to have a particular structure. See How to have local package override default package. MikTeX also has local folders: Create a local texmf folder in MikTeX — Alan Munn, Jul 20 '13 at 16:58
And does this still apply - http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/40386/17142 - namely, I should uninstall my default ubuntu texlive and install direct from the website? — Joe Tait, Jul 20 '13 at 17:08
Yes, generally the Linux distributions lag behind the actual TeXLive distribution and none (AFAIK) provide access to tlmgr, which means that you can't keep your packages up to date. See Adding a CTAN package to a MacPorts-maintained TeX installation for some discussion of the issue, and How to install "vanilla" TeXLive on Debian or Ubuntu?. — Alan Munn, Jul 20 '13 at 18:06

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 21 '13 at 11:49

To quote Alan Munn in the comments above "Why not put your .bib files in your local texmf folder: ~/texmf/bibtex/bib and then they will be found automatically. (i.e. you don't need to state the full path, just the .bib file name in your source document.)"

Install the latest version of TeXlive, and then place the bibliography in ~/texmf/bibtex/bib e.g.

~/texmf/bibtex/bib/my_bibliography.bib

Then one just needs to enter the line

\bibliography{my_bibliography}

at the end of any .tex file (in this example).

How to use a ~ in the path to my .bib file

1 Answers1