Extracting text from a file.
 

Hello everyone:

There are some log files that I wish to get some information from (Apache Access Log) but it is HUGE! All I need as of right now is any information from date and time A to date and time B. What commands can I use to extract this information from the access_log and put it into another file with just that information? I created a file called "access_info" by doing but I was not sure where to go from there. Thank you everyone in advance for your help! :)

grep should do the job.

grep [date] /path-to/filename.

The date has to be in the same format used in the file.

See man grep for more.

So just to be sure before I do so, can I do something like this:

I think so (I'm still learning grep).

You can test with

grep 2011-03-18 access_log

to see whether the desired output appears on the screen.

Depending on your current directory, you may have to include the full path to access_log.

You may want to adopt the practice of enclosing regular expressions in single quotes when invoking grep within bash. Bash uses some of the same meta-characters as used in regular expressions (even though they mean different things).

In this case it shouldn't matter, so frankbell's example should work fine. If your regular expression included [, *, or | then Bash would eat them before grep.

Telengard, becoming proficient at regular expressions is next on my list.

Thanks.

I began experimenting with Linux in 2005 to help with my Unix and programming classes. I've been using Linux on my own machines since 2006. In April 2009 I switch to Linux full time on my personal desktop. I still don't consider myself proficient with regular expressions. Take your time. ;D

A few tips you may find helpful:

• man 7 regex provides a fairly easy to read overview of regular expressions.
• Gnu Grep 2.7 manual is more in depth.
• Regular-Expressions.info is a good introductory course for practical applications.
• Almost every program using regular expressions has its own special syntax conventions. Regular expressions which work in one program don't necessarily work in all of them.

HTH

there are other tools besides grep that can do pattern matching, example awk, Perl, Python etc. I prefer Ruby.

I see your ruby and raise you an AWK :)

There are many, many ways:

;)

Lol, that's not equivalent to my Ruby example. Same with the shell one.

I don't know Ruby :p

awk has a similar syntax

The Gawk manual calls this a range pattern. I guess that means your Ruby program begins printing with your date pattern and stops printing after next date pattern.

the "awk" worked out great! Thanks again for everyones help! This really helped me on this big access_log file which was 7.2 GIGS