Rather vague description but perl may be better than os grep.

if files reside on multiple machines - run search on the seperate machines if possible.

if files reside on a single machine - process them locally.

do not open files across the network.

suggest:
create a list of log files
loop open log files
loop read current file
regex string1 (if match write ouput)
regex string2 (if match ...)
regex string3 (if match ...)
regex string4 (if match ...)
next record
next log file

assumes: will only parse the log files for these 4 strings. there will be no reason to search the same logfiles again for other strings.

Enjoy!
Dageek

In reply to Re: Optimizing string searches by johndageek
in thread Optimizing string searches by cool256

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