Bug#137823: bibtex fails with : Sorry---you've exceeded BibTeX's buffer size 5000

[Ariel Tankus <arielt@post.tau.ac.il>]

   I also receive the same bug.
None of the suggestions thus far helped (change in /etc/texmf and also
the perl spell).
AFAIK, my .bib file used to work on potato (I'll check this again at home,
where I still use potato).  The only change I did was to turn my document
to two column style.  Maybe this has something to do with the bug?
(The bibliography now turn to two column too, of course.)

   In addition, I use a different bypass than the one specified by Sven:

--------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/csh -f

# Author: Ariel Tankus.
# Created: 19.03.2002.

egrep '^\\((citation)|(bibdata)|(bibstyle))' $1.aux > ! $1_temp.aux
cp -p $1.bib $1_temp.bib
bibtex -min-crossrefs=500 $1_temp
/bin/mv -f $1_temp.blg $1.blg
/bin/mv -f $1_temp.bbl $1.bbl
/bin/rm -f $1_temp.{aux,bib}
--------------------------------------------------------

I send this bypass, because it shows that actually only the lines named
`citation' or `bibdata' or `bibstyle' affect bibtex.  The rest of the
auxfile is irrelevant to the output of bibtex (at least in my case),
so there is no reason whatsoever for a buffer overflow (except for a bug...).
A solution like increasing the buffer size in the released version would
not solve the problem, in my opinion.
The input file I use is not big at all:  it is about 45 pages.

  BTW, the bug also exists in Red Hat 7.1 which uses:
BibTeX (Web2C 7.3.1) 0.99c
kpathsea version 3.3.1
so it is not specific to Debian.


	-- Ariel.

---
Ariel Tankus
School of Computer Science
Tel-Aviv University
arielt@post.tau.ac.il