Parsing complex log files

First, we are going to examine the concept of parsing complex log files. Parsing log files is a challenging task because most log files are in plain text format, and that format does not follow any rules. Those files may be modified without showing any warning. The user can decide what kind of data they are going to store in a log file and in which format, as well as who is going to develop the application.

Before moving on to an example of log parsing or changing configurations in a log file, first we have to understand what we have got in a typical log file. According to that we have to decide, we will learn how to manipulate or get the information from it. We can also look for common terms in the log file so that we can use those common terms to fetch data.

Generally, you will see that most of the content generated in a log file is by the application...