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What are the regex equivalents of the wildcards ... and *?

hulahoop
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee

In inputs.conf and props.conf, the wildcards ... and * are supported for use in the spec headers. What do they translate to in PCRE? This is useful to know because sometimes the resulting matches are confusing.

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1 Solution

gkanapathy
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee
  • ... (three periods) in source stanza headings is treated as .* in PCRE regex
  • * (asterisk) in source stanza headings is treated as [^/\\]* in PCRE regex
  • . (one period) in stanza headings is treated as \.
  • Note that all other PCRE syntax is also valid
  • Note that the expression must match the entire path. In regex terms, the expression has an implicit ^ at the beginning and an implicit $ at the end, and that must match the source value.

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Lowell
Super Champion

You may also find some of this helpful:

gkanapathy
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee
  • ... (three periods) in source stanza headings is treated as .* in PCRE regex
  • * (asterisk) in source stanza headings is treated as [^/\\]* in PCRE regex
  • . (one period) in stanza headings is treated as \.
  • Note that all other PCRE syntax is also valid
  • Note that the expression must match the entire path. In regex terms, the expression has an implicit ^ at the beginning and an implicit $ at the end, and that must match the source value.

gkanapathy
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee

BTW, a particular piece of PCRE regex that may be particularly useful is the prefix (?i), which indicates that the regex from that point on is case-in*sensitive. This should usually be used when trying to match Windows file paths, e.g., `[source::(?i)...\program files\applogs\.log]`

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