This was one of the first scripts I wrote. I needed to rapidly find strings in compressed IIS logfiles, and this was the result.

It handles both compressed and uncompressed logfiles in the same directory, but does not handle ZIP files with more than one file inside.

Any feedback welcomed.

#
# Search.pl -- Search for arbitary string in logfiles
# Designed for a ActivePerl/Win32 environment
#
# Author: Joshua Thomas
# Last update: 10/24/2002
#
# 1.0: initial release
# 

use Archive::Zip qw( :ERROR_CODES :CONSTANTS );
use Cwd;

# Get our path and current working dir
# Expect the following args, ARGV[0] = [zip|log|all] 
# ARGV[1] = [path], ARGV[2] = [phrase], ARGV[3] = [outfile]

($scope = $ARGV[0]) || &usage;
($path = $ARGV[1]) || &usage;
($phrase = $ARGV[2]) || &usage;
($outfile = $ARGV[3]) || &usage;

# Strip whitespace from args
$scope =~ s/\s+//;

if ($scope != /(zip)|(log)|(all)/) { &usage; }

# Move to working directory

$cwd = getcwd();
chdir $path;

# Open the master file that we write results out to

open(OUTFILE, ">$outfile");

# Loop through all the zip files

if ($scope =~ /(zip)|(all)/ ) {

	while (defined ($file = glob("*.zip"))) { 
    
	    print "$file: ";

	    $zip = Archive::Zip->new();
	    die 'Bad zip file!' if $zip->read( $file ) != AZ_OK;

	    # We only expect one member/file [for now]
	    @members = $zip->memberNames();
	    $extracted = $members[0] . ".tmp";
		die "could not extract $members[0]!" if $zip->extractMember($members[0], $extracted) != AZ_OK;

		print "Extracted $members[0], ";
		
	    # Now we've got $file.log.tmp

	    # Find string, write to file
	    open(INFILE, $extracted);
	    print "finding matches, ";

	    while(<INFILE>){
	        if (/$phrase/) {
	        print OUTFILE "$_";
	        }
	    }

	    close(INFILE);

	    $result = `del $extracted`;
	
	    print" done.\n\n";
	}
}

# Loop through .log files

if ($scope =~ /(log)|(all)/ ) {

	while (defined ($file = glob("*.log"))) { 
    
	    print "$file: ";
	    
	    # Don't have to extract the file here, skip right to searching

	    open(INFILE, $file);
	    print "finding matches, ";

	    while(<INFILE>){
	        if (/$phrase/) {
	        print OUTFILE "$_";
	        }
	    }

	    close(INFILE);
	
	    print" done.\n\n";
	}
}

# Change back to starting directory 
chdir $cwd;

# Close file

close(OUTFILE);

sub usage {
    print ("search.pl -- Find lines with a given phrase from a directory of logfiles.\n");
    print ("useage: search.pl [zip|log|all] [path] [phrase] [outfile]\n\n");
    print ("option 'zip' will strip compessed .zip archives\n");
    print ("option 'log' will strip uncompressed .log files\n");
    print ("option 'all' will do both .zip and .log files\n");
    print ("[path] should be a full-length path surrounded by double-quotes.\n");
    exit(0);

}


/rgds,
ibanix