Logs Utility Applications..

Question

Hi,

I have complex log files, which are full of noise.

Can someone recommand a simple utility program which I can use to define lines which I want to filter out, or highlight using wildcards or any other method?

As well, a utility that can find logs which fulfill a certain condition (e.g., contains a line of a certain template) among a directory full of logs?

Regards

Answer 1

Have a look at LogParser from Microsoft. It has a SQL-like query language to allow you to filter log files based on conditions. Jeff Atwood has a brief overview of it here.

Answer 2

There's always good old "grep".

Answer 3

If you have a bit of time to play with PERL and regular expressions, this is the kind of thing they do beautifully.

Answer 4

I have used Bear tail with great success. They have a free as well as a paid version.