[CentOS] which program/command (perl, vi, or sed) is better

[Les Mikesell]

ann kok wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I have apache log file around 7.6G and record half year
> 
> Which program/command (perl, vi, or sed) is better to extract the data by date? and finally I can remove that big file and still keep the record.
> 
> I have problem when using vi and it uses up the server memory
> 
> Thank you for your help
> 

If the extraction is simple regex matches you could use sed, but I'd recommend 
perl because it has additional features that you might need if the program 
becomes more complex and it is easier to write in the first place.

But first I'd check to see if any of the available log processing programs will 
already do what you want.  If you are looking for summaries with counts by 
page/time interval/client IP, etc. they may do what you want.  I like analog 
because it is very fast and can deal with multiple files even if the times 
overlap and can uncompress them on the fly http://www.analog.cx/ or download rpm 
from http://www.iddl.vt.edu/~jackie/analog/.   Or you might like webalizer if 
you just have one server/file.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com