library(testit) pkgs = c('KernSmooth', 'xfun', 'knitr') pkg_bib(pkgs, tempfile(), tweak = FALSE) assert('& is escaped in title when pkg_bib(tweak = TRUE)', { (length(grep(' & ', grep( '^\\s*title =', capture.output(pkg_bib(pkgs, tweak = TRUE)), value = TRUE ))) %==% 0L) })