biber
Modern bibliography processor for BibLaTeX
TLDR
SYNOPSIS
biber [options] file[.bcf]
DESCRIPTION
biber is a modern bibliography processor designed as a replacement for BibTeX, serving as the backend for the biblatex package in LaTeX documents. It provides advanced sorting, filtering, and Unicode support.Biber reads a .bcf (biblatex control file) generated by LaTeX and produces a .bbl file containing the formatted bibliography. It supports multiple bibliography databases and offers extensive configuration options.
PARAMETERS
--output-directory dir
Directory where output files will be written-O, --output-file file
Output to specific file instead of basename.bbl--output-format format
Output format: bbl (default), dot, bibtex, biblatexml, bblxml-e, --input-encoding encoding
Character encoding for input files (default: UTF-8)-E, --output-encoding encoding
Character encoding for output files (default: UTF-8)--tool
Run in tool mode to convert/process a single data source (.bib) without a .bcf control file-V, --validate-datamodel
Validate data against the data model--validate-control
Schema validate the .bcf control file-q, --quiet
Log only errors; use twice to suppress all output-T, --trace
Enable low-level tracing for debugging (also turns on --debug)--logfile file
Write log messages to specified file--nolog
Do not write any logfile-v, --version
Display version number
INSTALL
CAVEATS
Biber requires a .bcf file generated by running LaTeX with biblatex first. The typical workflow is: pdflatex -> biber -> pdflatex -> pdflatex. Biber is not a drop-in replacement for BibTeX; it requires the biblatex package.
HISTORY
Biber was first written by Francois Charette; Philip Kime joined the development in 2009 and made it into the full-featured backend it is today. Written in Perl, it addressed limitations in BibTeX, particularly around Unicode support and advanced sorting. It became the recommended backend for biblatex and is now the standard for modern LaTeX bibliography processing.