Splunk Search

How to write regex to extract one capture group for user ID?

kmcconnell
Path Finder

I have a regex question that I hope will be easy for someone. I’m not big on regexes so I’m coming to you all for help. I have events where the user account is coming in by itself (xyz123) and sometimes with the domain (domain\xyz123), see below. I was able to just pull out the user IDs with a regex, but it had two capture groups instead of just one [U|u]ser\s(?:[\w\.]+\\(\w+)|([\w]+))\s. I’d like to have one capture group that only has the user ID.

[MsgID: 2]The user domain\xyz123 with source IP address

[MsgID: 2]The user xyz123 with source IP address
Tags (1)
1 Solution

martin_mueller
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

Try this:

[uU]ser\s(?:[\w.]+\\)?(?<user>\w+)\s

...provided I correctly understand your problem 🙂

View solution in original post

MuS
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

Hi kmcconnel,

assuming your ID's are always 6 alphanumeric values and are always before with in the events, try this regex:

(?<myUserID>\w{6})(?=\swith)

hope this helps ...

cheers, MuS

0 Karma

martin_mueller
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

Try this:

[uU]ser\s(?:[\w.]+\\)?(?<user>\w+)\s

...provided I correctly understand your problem 🙂

kmcconnell
Path Finder

I tried both approaches and they both work, but the answer from martin_mueller was what I had been working toward. Thank you both for the help.

somesoni2
Revered Legend

This works fine after added additional backslash after [\w.]+

MuS
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

HeHe, too slow again....

Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

Index This | What is broken 80% of the time by February?

December 2025 Edition   Hayyy Splunk Education Enthusiasts and the Eternally Curious!    We’re back with this ...

Unlock Faster Time-to-Value on Edge and Ingest Processor with New SPL2 Pipeline ...

Hello Splunk Community,   We're thrilled to share an exciting update that will help you manage your data more ...

Splunk MCP & Agentic AI: Machine Data Without Limits

Discover how the Splunk Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server can revolutionize the way your organization uses ...