=pod =for stopwords dategrep DATESPEC datespec syslog apache blocksize zcat bzcat rsyslog timestamped logrotate ARGV Domgoergen merchantability configfile !syslog =for HTML =for HTML Coverage Status =head1 NAME dategrep - print lines matching ranges of dates =head1 SYNOPSIS dategrep --start "12:00" --end "12:15" --format "%b %d %H:%M:%S" syslog dategrep --end "12:15" --format "%b %d %H:%M:%S" syslog dategrep --last-minutes 5 --format "%b %d %H:%M:%S" syslog dategrep --last-minutes 5 --format rsyslog syslog cat syslog | dategrep --end "12:15" =head1 DESCRIPTION dategrep searches the named input files for lines matching a date range and prints them to stdout. If dategrep works on a seekable file, it can do a binary search to find the first and last line to print pretty efficiently. dategrep can also read from stdin and compressed files, but it has to parse every single line until the end of the range for those. =head1 OPTIONS =over 4 =item --start|--from DATESPEC Print all lines from DATESPEC inclusively. Defaults to Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00 GMT. See L for a list of possible formats for DATESPEC. =item --end|--to DATESPEC Print all lines until DATESPEC exclusively. Default to the current time. See L for a list of possible formats for DATESPEC. =item --last-minutes MINUTES Print all lines from MINUTES minutes ago until the beginning of the current minute. So if we have 19:25:43 and MINUTES is five, dategrep will print all lines from 19:20:00 to 19:24:59. =item --format FORMAT Defines a strftime-based FORMAT that is used to parse the input lines for a date. The first date found on a line is used. The list of possible escape sequences can be found under L. This is a required parameter. Alternatively you can supply the format via the environment variable I. Additionally, dategrep supports named formats: =over 4 =item * rsyslog "%b %d %H:%M:%S" =item * apache "%d/%b/%Y:%T %z" =back =item --multiline Print all lines between the start and end line even if they are not timestamped. =item --blocksize SIZE SIZE of the intervals used in the binary search. Defaults to the native blocksize of the file's filesystem or 8129. =item --interleave Print lines sorted by timestamp even if the timestamps in the input files are overlapping. =item --sort-files Sort files in the order of the first line with a timestamp. For example: If you have a common logrotate configuration, you probably have files like syslog, syslog.1, syslog.2 etc. For dategrep to work we need those files in reverse order: syslog.2, syslog.1, syslog. This options handles that for you. =item --configfile FILE Reads configuration from FILE instead of I<~/.dategreprc>. =item --help Shows a short help message =item --man Shows the complete man page in your pager. =back =head1 CONFIGURATION FILE On startup dategrep reads a configuration file from I<$HOME/.dategreprc> or the file specified by I<--configfile>. The file consists of sections and variables. A section begins with the name of the section in square brackets and continues until the next section begins. Section names are not case sensitive. Empty lines and lines with comments are skipped. Comments are started with a hash character. dategrep recognizes only one sections: Under I you can list additional named formats. Example: [formats] time = %H:%M:%S =head1 ENVIRONMENT =over 4 =item DATEGREP_DEFAULT_FORMAT Default for the I<--format> parameter. The syntax is described there. =back =head1 COMPRESSED FILES dategrep has only minimal support for compressed files. If any file in ARGV has an extension like I<.z>,I<.gz>,I<.bz2>,I<.bz>, dategrep will call I or I respectively and read from it like from stdin. =head1 INSTALLATION It is possible to install this script via perl normal install routines. perl Build.PL ./Build ./Build install Or you can build a standalone script, copy it somewhere in your path and install its only dependency Date::Manip. In Debian you just need the following: perl Build.PL ./Build standalone cp dategrep-standalone ~/bin/dategrep apt-get install libdate-manip-perl =head1 LIMITATION dategrep expects the files to be sorted. If the timestamps are not ascending, dategrep might be exiting before the last line in its date range is printed. Compressed files are just piped into dategrep via bzcat or zcat. =head1 SEE ALSO L =head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE Copyright 2014 Mario Domgoergen C<< >> This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see .