Thanks for the suggestions, looks to me like Syslog is just too variable however I have another idea

My lines look like the following

May  2 04:06:15 lon-pop.mail.mydom.com pop3login: LOGOUT, user=gonenow, ip=[::ffff:127.0.0.1], top=0, retr=0, rcvd=24, sent=5560, time=1

The first three parts are pretty standard i.e. datetime( though with no year ) sysloghost, operation then the variable message.

What I would like to do is convert this to a csv line as follows where its broken into at least four parts but if the string user=gonenow appears then add gonenow ( or whatever the users name was ) as an extra field, same for ip=

02/05/2012 04:06:15,lon-pop.mail.mydom.com,pop3login,"LOGOUT, user=gonenow, ip=[::ffff:127.0.0.1], top=0, retr=0, rcvd=24, sent=5560, time=1</c>",gonenow,::ffff:127.0.0.1

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.