Unix Character matchin.

[usblackhawk]

hi guys!

im trying to use Unix and Lex to character match. basically i have a log file that contains the following:

[31/Jan/2006:23:45:57 962
[31/Jan/2006:23:45:57 893
[31/Jan/2006:23:45:57 827
[31/Jan/2006:23:45:57 2766
[31/Jan/2006:23:45:57 2017
[31/Jan/2006:23:45:57 10991

i would like to use lex to achieve the answer:

31/Jan/2006 962
31/Jan/2006 893
31/Jan/2006 827
31/Jan/2006 2766

basically removing the time stamp from the date, but leaving all other characters

i have tried many ways, using lex, and awk - but cant seem to find an answer.

i would really appreciate anyone's help.

[anomie]

One option:

[hector@centos1 ~]$ echo '[31/Jan/2006:23:45:57 962' | awk '{ sub(/\[/,"") ; sub (/:.*/,"",$1) ; print $0 }'
31/Jan/2006 962

[usblackhawk]

Thanks for the reply

But strangely i get a syntax error:

awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: illegal statement near line 1
awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: illegal statement near line 1

Dont know whats going wrong.

[anomie]

Did you copy and paste that example exactly?

In your case you need to do:

$ awk '{ sub(/\[/,"") ; sub (/:.*/,"",$1) ; print $0 }' log-file-here

If you're still getting errors post the exact errors. (Just take a copy of the whole session including the command you typed.)

[usblackhawk]

Did you copy and paste that example exactly?

In your case you need to do:

$ awk '{ sub(/\[/,"") ; sub (/:.*/,"",$1) ; print $0 }' log-file-here

If you're still getting errors post the exact errors. (Just take a copy of the whole session including the command you typed.)

i put the following code into a file names soln09awktime:

$ awk '{ sub(/\[/,"") ; sub (/:.*/,"",$1) ; print $0 }' soln09log

soln09log being the name of the log file im trying to manipulate.

then in the Unix to run the file im typing:

$ soln09awktime

i get the same error:

awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: illegal statement near line 1
awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: illegal statement near line 1

[usblackhawk]

Could it be the word "sub"

what does this actually mean?

[anomie]

What distro are you seeing this error on? Also, what does awk --version | head -1 show you?

I thought all GNU/Linux used gawk (and awk is a symlink to it). This should work no problem. Try running it directly from the command line -- you don't need to make it into a script.

All this is doing is squeezing out the '[' character, and then squeezing out everything from ':' until the end of the word in the first column.

If you want to test whether the sub() function works on your awk implementation, just try:

$ echo 'Moo' | awk '{ sub(/M/,"B"); print }'

Any complaints about the syntax? It should have printed Boo.

[usblackhawk]

im running it on a UNIX server over PuTTY.

i still get an error, so i assume sub doesnt work.

login1[u] echo 'Moo' | awk '{ sub(/M/,"B"); print }'
awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: illegal statement near line 1

[usblackhawk]

is there a way of doing

$ awk '{ sub(/\[/,"") ; sub (/:.*/,"",$1) ; print $0 }' log-file-here

using LEX, maybe this would avoid the error.

[anomie]

You didn't state which version / awk you're using. If it's a SunOS box it could be nawk. Unfortunately different implementations of awk sometimes have different subtleties to their syntax.

I'm not interested in learning lex just to answer one question, so I will go away now. Good luck.