Using Fields Efficiently

[peasead]

I'm trying to get a search to run as efficiently as possible and a couple of the guys on my team have been going back and forth regarding the placement of the 'fields' syntax.

I have always put the 'fields' syntax immediately after my sourcetype, but some people put it in the middle of the search, some put it before/after the math that is done, some put it right before the 'stats', 'table', etc.

I looked in the documentation, but I didn't see anything saying that it should go "here" or "there".

Is there a preferred place to put the 'fields' syntax?

[yannK · Accepted solution]

If you really want to go that way, use the search inspector (the "i" button) to see the search speed.
and run the same search on the same time window with several variations of your search.

[peasead]

Great idea.

As it turns out, it doesn't matter much.