phpman > man > detex(1)

DETEX(1)                               General Commands Manual                              DETEX(1)



NAME
       detex - a filter to strip TeX commands from a .tex file.

SYNOPSIS
       detex [ -clnstw ] [ -e environment-list ] [ filename[.tex] ... ]

DESCRIPTION
       Detex  reads each file in sequence, removes all comments and TeX control sequences and writes
       the remainder on the standard output.  All text in math mode and display mode is removed.  By
       default,  detex  follows  \input  commands.  If a file cannot be opened, a warning message is
       printed and the command is ignored.  If the -n option is used, no \input or \include commands
       will  be  processed.   This  allows single file processing.  If no input file is given on the
       command line, detex reads from standard input.

       If the magic sequence ``\begin{document}'' appears in the text, detex assumes it  is  dealing
       with  LaTeX  source  and detex recognizes additional constructs used in LaTeX.  These include
       the \include and \includeonly commands.  The -l option can be used to force  LaTeX  mode  and
       the -t option can be used to force TeX mode regardless of input content.

       Text  in  various environment modes of LaTeX is ignored.  The default modes are array, eqnar‐
       ray, equation, longtable, picture, tabular and verbatim.  The -e option can be used to  spec‐
       ify  a comma separated environment-list of environments to ignore.  The list replaces the de‐
       faults so specifying an empty list effectively causes no environments to be ignored.

       The -c option can be used in LaTeX mode to have detex echo the arguments to \cite, \ref,  and
       \pageref macros.  This can be useful when sending the output to a style checker.

       Detex  assumes  the  standard  character  classes are being used for TeX.  Detex allows white
       space between control sequences and magic characters like `{' when  recognizing  things  like
       LaTeX environments.

       The  -r  option tries to naively replace $..$, $$..$$, \(..\) and \[..\] with nouns and verbs
       (in particular, "noun" and "verbs") in a way that keeps sentences readable.

       If the -w flag is given, the output is a word list, one `word' (string of two or more letters
       and apostrophes beginning with a letter) per line, and all other characters ignored.  Without
       -w the output follows the original, with the deletions mentioned above.   Newline  characters
       are preserved where possible so that the lines of output match the input as closely as possi‐
       ble.

       The -1 option will prefix each printed line with `filename:linenumber:` indicating where that
       line is coming from in terms of the original (La)TeX document.

       The  TEXINPUTS  environment variable is used to find \input and \include files.  Like TeX, it
       interprets a leading or trailing `:' as the default TEXINPUTS.  It does not support the  `//'
       directory expansion magic sequence.

       Detex now handles the basic TeX ligatures as a special case, replacing the ligatures with ac‐
       ceptable charater substitutes.  This eliminates spelling errors introduced by merely removing
       them.   The ligatures are \aa, \ae, \oe, \ss, \o, \l (and their upper-case equivalents).  The
       special "dotless" characters \i and \j are also replaced with i and j respectively.

       Note that previous versions of detex would replace control sequences with a  space  character
       to  prevent words from running together.  However, this caused accents in the middle of words
       to break words, generating "spelling errors" that were not  desirable.   Therefore,  the  new
       version merely removes these accents.  The old functionality can be essentially duplicated by
       using the -s option.

SEE ALSO
       tex(1)

DIAGNOSTICS
       Nesting of \input is allowed but the number of opened files  must  not  exceed  the  system's
       limit  on the number of simultaneously opened files.  Detex ignores unrecognized option char‐
       acters after printing a warning message.

AUTHOR
       Originally written by Daniel Trinkle, Computer Science Department, Purdue University

       Maintained by Piotr Kubowicz <https://github.com/pkubowicz/opendetex>.

BUGS
       Detex is not a complete TeX interpreter, so it can be confused by some constructs.  Most  er‐
       rors result in too much rather than too little output.

       Running LaTeX source without a ``\begin{document}'' through detex may produce errors.

       Suggestions for improvements are (mildly) encouraged.



Purdue University                           4 March 2021                                    DETEX(1)