extractTexRefs

extractTexRefs.py extracts information about citations, theorems, definitions, sections, etc. from the LaTeX aux file.

Example

Suppose the second theorem in a TeX file is this:

\begin{theorem}
\label{odd-sq-is-odd}
The square of an odd number is also odd.
\end{theorem}

Then its entry in the .aux file will look something like this:

\newlabel{odd-sq-is-odd}{{2}{1}{}{theorem.6}{}}

extractTexRefs.py parses it and outputs this JSON:

{"type": "theorem", "texLabel": "odd-sq-is-odd", "outputId": "2", "anchor": "theorem.6", "page": "1"}

A more complete example can be found in the example directory (see example.tex and example.pdf). Running the following commands will build example/example.tex and extract information about definitions, theorems, lemmas, sections, etc. from example/example.aux to output.json.

cd example
make
cd ..
python3 extractTexRefs.py example/example.aux -o output.json

How it works

Corresponding to each \label command in a TeX file, there is a line in the .aux file of the following format:

\newlabel{texLabel}{{outputId}{page}{context}{anchor}{misc}}

There are addition lines if \cite commands are used or the cleveref package is used.

extractTexRefs.py parses these and outputs a JSON list of all these references.