Truncate authors list in citeulike.org-generated BibTeX file

author-filter.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# Read a BibTex file generated by citeulike.org and truncate any author lists
# that contain too many authors.
#
# Tobin Fricke, 2011-09-27

use strict;

my $max_authors = 10;

while (<>) {
    my $line = $_;
    if ($line =~ /^    author = {(.*)},$/) {
	my @authors = split / and /, $1;
	if (scalar(@authors) > $max_authors) {
	    # only give one author, "and others".
	    print "    author = {" . $authors[0] . " and others},\n";
	} else {
	    # authors list has acceptable number of authors
	    print $line;
	}
    } else {
	# this line does not define an author list
	print $line;
    }    
}