in reply to Sorting file with regex

It looks there is something really wrong with your bibliography and \bibitems. For starters, it is advised to keep your bibliography in a separate file with the .bib extension and not in a .tex-file. More important however is that the names should be first last or first middle last and then (La)TeX will take care of proper sorting in your bibliography. There should be no need to take care of sorting this yourself.

More info you will find at LaTeX Bibliography Management

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

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