Trim field for operations

[msarro]

Hey everyone, I have an event type containing two fields that I need to trim. They're currently in this format:

02/09/11 at 2:56 PM","eth 0/1","NNNNNNNNNNNN","NNNNNNNNNNNN","72 ms","0","0 ms","0","4.200","G711U"

The fields I need trimmed are the "72 ms" and "0 ms". I just need the " ms" portion to be removed so I can start doing mathematical operations. The best would be removing this at index time, however I can also do it at search time. I tried using the field extractor but the regex it generates doesn't seem to make any sense.

This is what it generated: (?i)^(?:[^"]*"){9}(?P[^ ]+)

[David · Accepted solution]

If this comes in CSV format, it might be best to use Splunk's wizardry to extract the fields early on:

http://www.splunk.com/base/Documentation/latest/Data/Extractfieldsfromfileheadersatindextime

If that's not an option (or so you can get up and running first), the following regex should do the trick, for the particular event you've pasted:

YourSearch | rex field=_raw "\"(?<Field1>\d*) ms\",\"\d*\",\"(?<Field2>\d*) ms" 
           | stats avg(Field1), avg(Field2)

You can take that regular expression and move it into props.conf as well:

[my_sourcetype]
EXTRACT-extract_two_fields = "(?<Field1>\d*) ms","\d*","(?<Field2>\d*) ms

(I don't believe you need to escape the quotes in props.conf -- you may need to put those escapes back in, if not).

Should you have Splunk pull out the field names (as per the first link), you'd end up with ResponseTime="72 ms" and Jitter="0 ms" (or whatever those represent). You could then pull out the numbers by doing:

YourSearch | rex field=ResponseTime "(?<NumResponseTime>\d*)" 
           | rex field=Jitter "(?<NumJitter>\d*)"

Let me know if that answers your question.

[David]

The Rex uses Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE).. at is at least very similar. You might get into issues where you have to escape things (such as a quote), but that you can generally figure out by starting with something simple, and building up with a little trial and error. The authoritative source for PCRE is http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html , and if you google PCRE tutorial, or Perl Regular Expressions Tutorial, you might find a few things that are a bit more "how do I get started." This one looks promising: http://www.troubleshooters.com/codecorn/littperl/perlreg.htm

[msarro]

Do you happen to have a good tutorial for the rex syntax, specifically for trimming/removing extra characters? I'd very much appreciate it.

[David]

Excellent. I'm glad to hear that.

[msarro]

The insert into props.conf worked like a bell. Thanks!