Hi,

1. I am trying to grep for two patterns from a set of 820 apache webserver logs,
2. When I Try to search the pattern with a date stamp and use a wildcard character * for ex: /28/Aug/2008:21*/ to get all the log entries for that particular hour that is 21 st hour I get errors. Please kindly let me know where I am going wrong.

The following is the command I am trying to use:

perl -ne 'print if (/mckinskey@futuron.com/ ? ($c=1) : (--$c > 0)) ; print if (/28/Aug/2008:21*/ ? ($d = 1) : (--$d > 0))' request.log*


[m78i5@serv125 ~]$ perl -ne 'print if (/mckinskey@futuron.com/ ? ($c=1) : (--$c > 0)) ; print if (/28/Aug/2008:01:35*/ ? ($d = 1) : (--$d > 0))' request.log*
Bareword found where operator expected at -e line 1, near "/28/Aug"
(Missing operator before Aug?)
syntax error at -e line 1, near "/28/Aug"
Search pattern not terminated at -e line 1.

[m78i5@serv125 ~]$ perl -ne 'print if (/mckinskey@futuron.com/ ? ($c=1) : (--$c > 0)) ; print if (/28/Aug/2008:01*/ ? ($d = 1) : (--$d > 0))' request.log*
Bareword found where operator expected at -e line 1, near "/28/Aug"
(Missing operator before Aug?)
syntax error at -e line 1, near "/28/Aug"
Search pattern not terminated at -e line 1.

[m78i5@serv125 ~]$ perl -ne 'print if (/mckinskey@futuron.com/ ? ($c=1) : (--$c > 0)) ; print if (/28/Aug/2008:21*/ ? ($d = 1) : (--$d > 0))' request.log*
Bareword found where operator expected at -e line 1, near "/28/Aug"
(Missing operator before Aug?)
syntax error at -e line 1, near "/28/Aug"
Search pattern not terminated at -e line 1.



Thanks

The / is being treated as the search term delimiter. Put double-quotes around the date string. Also, you don't need the *. In /28/Aug/2008:21* that really means /28/Aug/2008:2 and zero or more ones. Depending on how strict you want the match, you could use this:
print if ( m"/28/Aug/2008:21" ...
But I think you have other issues in your command.

I find that complex one-liners like this are better done first as a multi-line perl script file. Get it working, then compress it down to one line, then use it with perl -e.