Splunk Search

Why am I getting an eval command error "The arguments to the match function are invalid"?

Taner
Engager

I would like to create a new panel in my Dashboard and I am using the following search string:

index=$index$ eventId=xy source="zz-json.log" (X-TRACE-ID="PV3*") OR (X-TRACE-ID="IPL*")| dedup X-TRACE-ID |
eval event=case(
match(X-TRACE-ID,"PV3"),"Option1",
match(X-TRACE-ID,"IPL"),"Option2") | chart count by event

Why do I get the error message: Error in "eval" command: The arguments to the „match“ function are invalid.

Could you please help me 😞 ?

Tags (1)
0 Karma
1 Solution

somesoni2
Revered Legend

You should enclose field names with special characters within single quotes in eval and where clause. Like this

index=$index$ eventId=xy source="zz-json.log" (X-TRACE-ID="PV3*") OR (X-TRACE-ID="IPL*")| dedup X-TRACE-ID | 
eval event=case( 
match('X-TRACE-ID',"PV3"),"Option1", 
match('X-TRACE-ID',"IPL"),"Option2") | chart count by event

View solution in original post

somesoni2
Revered Legend

You should enclose field names with special characters within single quotes in eval and where clause. Like this

index=$index$ eventId=xy source="zz-json.log" (X-TRACE-ID="PV3*") OR (X-TRACE-ID="IPL*")| dedup X-TRACE-ID | 
eval event=case( 
match('X-TRACE-ID',"PV3"),"Option1", 
match('X-TRACE-ID',"IPL"),"Option2") | chart count by event

Taner
Engager

It is working. Thank you very much 🙂

0 Karma

s2_splunk
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee

The hyphens in your field names cause Splunk to evaluate the field as the expression X minus TRACE minus ID. Try adding | rename X-TRACE-ID as xtraceid after your dedup and use xtraceid in your match expressions and it should work as expected.

0 Karma

s2_splunk
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee

response overlap with sbbadri, sorry for the dupe

0 Karma

sbbadri
Motivator

try below, i think - in XTRACEID created a issue.

index=$index$ eventId=xy source="zz-json.log" (X-TRACE-ID="PV3*") OR (X-TRACE-ID="IPL*")| dedup X-TRACE-ID | rename X-TRACE-ID as XTRACEID | eval event=case(
match(XTRACEID ,"PV3"),"Option1",
match(XTRACEID ,"IPL"),"Option2") | chart count by event

0 Karma
Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

Splunk Decoded: Service Maps vs Service Analyzer Tree View vs Flow Maps

It’s Monday morning, and your phone is buzzing with alert escalations – your customer-facing portal is running ...

What’s New in Splunk Observability – September 2025

What's NewWe are excited to announce the latest enhancements to Splunk Observability, designed to help ITOps ...

Fun with Regular Expression - multiples of nine

Fun with Regular Expression - multiples of nineThis challenge was first posted on Slack #regex channel ...