Splunk Search

How to get a numeric field extracted

Regleston
New Member

I am trying to extract the "Time taken" from this field.

2019-11-20 09:38:22,157 INFO Time taken: 01:35:53.514

The problem I have is that when I use Splunk to create a regex it creates it as an "a".
From what I understand that happens when more then half of the characters aren't numeric.
As you can see there are 12 chars, 9 of which are numeric, so I am not sure why this field is created as an "a" and not a "#".

Can anyone please help?

0 Karma
1 Solution

woodcock
Esteemed Legend

Like this:

... | rex "Time taken:\s(?:(?:(?<duration_hours>\d+):)?(?<duration_minutes>\d+):)?(?<duration_seconds>.+)$"
| fillnull value=0 duration_hours duration_minutes 
| eval duration = duration_seconds + (60 * (duration_minutes + (60 * duration_hours))) 
| fieldformat duration = tostring(duration, "duration")

View solution in original post

0 Karma

woodcock
Esteemed Legend

Like this:

... | rex "Time taken:\s(?:(?:(?<duration_hours>\d+):)?(?<duration_minutes>\d+):)?(?<duration_seconds>.+)$"
| fillnull value=0 duration_hours duration_minutes 
| eval duration = duration_seconds + (60 * (duration_minutes + (60 * duration_hours))) 
| fieldformat duration = tostring(duration, "duration")
0 Karma

Regleston
New Member

Thanks jpolvino & woodcock for the advice. I made regex for hh mm ss nnn and used the parsing woodcock provided and I am all smiles.

0 Karma

jpolvino
Builder

You can change the type, see link

But why do you want to change it? The time taken is clearly not a number. How about parsing it apart and then doing calculations to render it into an actual numeric type, such as seconds?

0 Karma
Career Survey
First 500 qualified respondents will receive a $20 gift card! Tell us about your professional Splunk journey.
Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

Observe and Secure All Apps with Splunk

 Join Us for Our Next Tech Talk: Observe and Secure All Apps with SplunkAs organizations continue to innovate ...

What's New in Splunk Observability - August 2025

What's New We are excited to announce the latest enhancements to Splunk Observability Cloud as well as what is ...

Introduction to Splunk AI

How are you using AI in Splunk? Whether you see AI as a threat or opportunity, AI is here to stay. Lucky for ...