topic Re: rex capture groups - windows file name and path in Splunk Search

rex capture groups - windows file name and path

brdr — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 19:58:09 GMT

I'm attempting to capture 2 groups; a windows path and filename. I've successfully written the rex syntax and it works using strong textregex101.com*strong text* app.

| makeresults
| eval test="C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\ABCDE\HELP_WITHREX_64.EXE"
| rex field=test "(?<Path>^.+\\)(?<File>[^\\]+\.\w+$)"
| table Path File

However, when I use in Splunk I get an error "Regex: missing terminating ] for character class." Any idea why? thx.

Re: rex capture groups - windows file name and path

xpac — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 19:54:03 GMT

Yeah, the | rex command is a little tricky, as stuff has to be double-escaped. Try replacing \\ with \\\ - that should work.
Hint: This is usually not necessary in config files, but in searches, as those have to be escaped once for the SPL parser and once for the regex parser.

Hope that helps - if it does I'd be happy if you would upvote/accept this answer, so others could profit from it. 🙂

Re: rex capture groups - windows file name and path

brdr — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 20:13:19 GMT

Ah, thanks xpac...

This is the change, and now works.

 rex field=test "(?<Path>^.+\\\)(?<File>[^\\\]+\.\w+$)"