opening/grepping a gzipped file

Ronunism has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm attempting to open up and grep a gzipped log file, but can't seem to ever get it to work.
Currently I have:


open (FILE, `gunzip -dc /usr/local/apache/logs/access.log.1.gz | grep 
+"dd/Mon/yyyy" |`) or die "Couldn't open gunzip pipe ($!)\n";

while (<FILE>)
  {
   # massive substitutions and DBI Calls
  }

close FILE;
[download]

and get a "Couldn't open gunzip pipe (No such file or directory)" error. When I remove the grep call, I get an "Couldn't open gunzip pipe (File name too long)" error. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

Comment on opening/grepping a gzipped file Download Code

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Re: opening/grepping a gzipped file by dws (Chancellor) on Dec 19, 2001 at 01:59 UTC
First off, don't use backticks. If you do, the filename passed to `open()` might be very, very long. Secondly, you can save a process invocation by doing the `grep` inline. `my $file = "/usr/local/apache/logs/access.log.1.gz"; open(PIPE, "gunzip -dc $file \|") or die "gunzip $file: $!"; while ( <PIPE> ) { next if ! m\|dd/Mon/yyyy\|; # massive whatever } close(PIPE);` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: opening/grepping a gzipped file by tune (Curate) on Dec 19, 2001 at 01:40 UTC
Why are you using ` to open a pipe? Why not "? Maybe `open (FILE, "gunzip -dc /usr/local/apache/logs/access.log.1.gz \| grep +\"dd/Mon/yyyy\" \|") or die "Couldn't open gunzip pipe ($!)\n";` [download] will be better -- tune	[reply] [d/l]
Re: opening/grepping a gzipped file by TomK32 (Monk) on Dec 19, 2001 at 01:50 UTC
Unx User might prefer zgrep* or one of the other *greps: tomk32@tomk32 ~$ apropos grep bzegrep (1) - search possibly bzip2 compressed files for a re +gular expression bzfgrep (1) - search possibly bzip2 compressed files for a re +gular expression bzgrep (1) - search possibly bzip2 compressed files for a re +gular expression egrep (1) - print lines matching a pattern exigrep (8) - program to extract information from exim logs fgrep (1) - print lines matching a pattern grep (1) - print lines matching a pattern pgrep (1) - look up or signal processes based on name and o +ther attributes rgrep (1) - print lines matching a pattern zegrep (1) - search possibly compressed files for a regular +expression zfgrep (1) - search possibly compressed files for a regular +expression zgrep (1) - search possibly compressed files for a regular +expression zipgrep (1) - search files in a ZIP archive for lines matchin +g a pattern [download] `-- package Lizard::King; sub can { do { 'anything'} };` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: opening/grepping a gzipped file by sparkyichi (Deacon) on Dec 19, 2001 at 01:38 UTC
Try the Zip modules for Archive such as Archive::Zip and Archive::Tar. Sparky	[reply]