topic Re: Searching for punct field values in Splunk Search

Searching for punct field values

landen99 — Thu, 01 May 2014 20:13:48 GMT

As the title reveals, I am trying to search the punct field for specific values. The punct field is naturally tricky because it includes quotation marks, dashes, and other unique characters which naturally yield search errors or throw off the search.

The search below is most likely incorrect but serves to clarify the task and an example string including problematic characters:

| search punct="___::_..__--::_..__-_-_-___:__="_':\__()\_\_\.\\.'"

The most obvious problem with this string is the double quotation mark in the middle of the string. These strings vary in form with each event record and different strings may be desired for the punct search.

In summary, how do I search the event records for specific punct field values?

Re: Searching for punct field values

somesoni2 — Thu, 01 May 2014 21:35:41 GMT

Based on the punct values I see in my logs, double qoutes is the only problematic character. You can escape it with a backward slash (\). How are you providing your punct filters, through dashboard/form input?

Re: Searching for punct field values

martin_mueller — Thu, 01 May 2014 21:38:52 GMT

You need to escape double quotes and backslashes with a backslash, then you can search for punct values like any other field="value".

Re: Searching for punct field values

landen99 — Fri, 02 May 2014 11:57:47 GMT

Are you saying that the search for the string in the field above would look like this?:

| search punct="___::_..__--::_..__-_-_-___:__=\"_':\\__()\\_\\_\\.\\\\.'"

Re: Searching for punct field values

landen99 — Fri, 02 May 2014 11:58:16 GMT

This is for a normal search (currently).

Re: Searching for punct field values

martin_mueller — Fri, 02 May 2014 13:03:27 GMT

If that's your entire search then you should leave off the | search.