Dear Monks,

This will be my first post - Indeed, I am working on my first attempts at PERL, so my knowledge is extremely rudimentary. I assure you that I have gnawed on a few pencils before posting this.

I have a log file ('dread-etc.log'). Inside of that log file are the following phrases. . . 

"this message has no use whatsoever"
"data, blah, blah, blah"
"this message has no value, only confusion"
"data, blah, blah, blah"
"this is a bad error message"
"data, blah, blah, blah"

[download]

My goal is to be able to run a perl script against this file so that it pulls out only the data (pattern?) that I have defined ("this is a bad error message"). Since this hypothetical file is filled with all types of nonsense, I want to be able to pull out only what I want and create another file. For now, even if the file is empty that would be a good start.

I think that the poor man's logic behind this would be. 

a. open the dreadetc.log file
b. search the dreadetc.log file for specific error messages ($x = "thi
+s is a bad error message")
c. write out a new log file called only_the_dread.txt

[download]

I thank you for your time in advance,

Doc Wally

Update:

Dear Monks,

Thanks for the replies. I am actually on a Windows machine.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Regards and thanks,

Doc Wally

20080701 Janitored by Corion: Restored original content, added formatting, code tags, as per Writeup Formatting Tips

In reply to Locating "Patterns" in a log file (e.g. keywords, etc) by NTGeek

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