I understand that JabRef has implemented a month-checker so that the current field of month in a bibtex file will be unified to #jan# formation instead of jan (see issue of changes). However, this change breaks my bibtex style compatibility. For example, in my bst file, I have
MACRO {jan} {"January"}
and it now doesn’t recognize #jan# to be January. Is there any workaround to solve this compatibility problem? I prefer not to add any lines in my bibtex file manually as it will be changed back when the bibtex file is opened in JabRef. I can modify the bst style file if necessary.
Saving month = jan instead of month = {jan} is a standard BibTeX feature. JabRef did not create this unification of date format, but makes it easier to enforce (Note: JabRef displays #jan# in the month field of the entry editor, but in the .bib file, it really appears as month = jan (have a look at the content of the BibTeX source tab).
Your bst file should be aware of this BibTeX feature. Hence, I would recommend to modify the bst file.
May be your month = {\#nov\#} in the BibTeX file came from a bug in an previous version of Jabref…
I suggest not to alter your bst file but to correct your bib files, so that your bib files follow the BibTeX standards.
The easiest and fastest solution for you may be to modify the .bib files by hand (using a text editor): Find all the occurrences of month = {\#nov\#} and replace them with month = nov. This has to be done 12 times, which is kind of easy. But be careful to you may have to correct some fields looking like month = {#nov#-#dec#}
If your text editor is smart, you may be able to remove in one pass all the \# of the month field.
Thank you for the insight. I think since I have been stick to the dev branch of JabRef for a while, some bugs in previous versions of JabRef might have been ruined my bibtex file. Not only there is a formation problem with the month field, the stamp date formation has always been affected. Using a notepad to replace all the 12 months, I have fixed the issue.