%% 
%%  Ein Beispiel der DANTE-Edition
%%  Bibliografie mit LaTeX
%%  2. Auflage
%%  Beispiel 02-06-3 auf Seite 30.
%%  Copyright (C) 2016 Herbert Voss
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%%  of this license or (at your option) any later version.
%%  See http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt for details.
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%% ==bibtex== 
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\documentclass[]{exaarticle}
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\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\setlength\parindent{0pt}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{crossref2.bib}
@PREAMBLE{ "\providecommand{\noopsort}[1]{}" }
@book{TAOCP3,
   crossref = {TAOCP},
   title = {Sorting and Searching},
   volume = 3,
   series = {The Art of Computer Programming},
   edition = 2,
   year = 1998,
}
@book{TAOCP2,
   crossref = {TAOCP},
   title = {Seminumerical Algorithms},
   volume = 2,
   series = {The Art of Computer Programming},
   edition = 2,
   year = 1981,
}
@book{TAOCP,
   author = {Donald E. Knuth},
   publisher = {Addison"=Wesley},
   title = {The Art of Computer Programming},
   series = {7 B{\"a}nde},
   year = {{\noopsort{z1968}}1968},
}
\end{filecontents*}
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\begin{document}
Verändern der Ausgabereigenfolge
durch

\verb+year = "{\noopsort{z1968}}1968",+

für Knuth --
1968.~\cite{TAOCP2,TAOCP3}.
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{crossref2}
\end{document}