Splunk Search

Prevent query autoformat from deleting empty lines

d_o_c
New Member

It can enhance query readability to separate large queries into their logical components using empty lines:

index = events
`comment("find and filter events")`
| ...
| ...
| ...

`comment("derive statistics of type A")`
| ...
| ...

`comment("derive statistics of type B")`
| ...
| ...

`comment("sort and format the results")`
| ...
| ...

But the Splunk search's auto-format removes empty lines. I'd like to prevent that. Is there a way to retain all auto-format functionality EXCEPT for deleting empty lines?

If that's impossible, I'd like to find the minimum "filler-text" which I could use to separate logical blocks of a search.
Right now my only candidates are empty comments and noop.

`comment("")`
| noop

Are there any better alternatives? I'm also suspicious that "noop" might not be benign.
I'm using Splunk Enterprise 7.3.0

0 Karma

DalJeanis
Legend
| rename COMMENT as "my comment"

but it's not any better.

0 Karma
Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

Data Management Digest – December 2025

Welcome to the December edition of Data Management Digest! As we continue our journey of data innovation, the ...

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 ...