topic Re: Regex Error in Splunk Search

Regex Error

rahiparikh — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:23:08 GMT

Hi,

I am trying to use simple regex to find clients with specific IPs. My regex looks like

status=404 | regex host=*10.\d\d\d.\d\d\d.\d\d\d*

When I run the search in splunk it gives me error which looks like -

Error in 'SearchOperator:regex': The regex '*10.\d\d\d.\d\d\d.\d\d\d*' is invalid. nothing to repeat.

I am completely new to splunk. So, any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Rahil

Re: Regex Error

carmackd — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:49:03 GMT

Your problem might be that you didnt escape the dots(.) in your regular expression. Try this:

 | regex host="10\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+"

Re: Regex Error

sideview — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 17:01:48 GMT

Depending on what you're trying to do you might be better off just searching for the IP addresses than using regex command. status="404" host="10.*"

Re: Regex Error

rahiparikh — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 17:05:24 GMT

Thanks for the help. I just copied the text from Splunk User Manual but didn't know that I need to escape the dots.

Thanks again for you help. 🙂

Re: Regex Error

carmackd — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:15:45 GMT

No problem! Glad to help 🙂

Re: Regex Error

phatfingers — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 07:26:37 GMT

The prior poster gave good advice about an additional problem. The particular error shown, "nothing to repeat", was referring to the use of an asterisk as the first character. The asterisk means "zero or more of the preceding token" (e.g. the most recent discrete thing just to the left of the asterisk). Because the given regex started with an asterisk, Splunk threw an error because there was nothing to the left of the asterisk to repeat.