Trouble parsing CSV file

I have a log file: below a single line of the log:

2012-10-10 ; 09:56:28 ; W3SVC ; OnPreprocHeaders ; 192.168.1.10 ; ; ; site.test.acme.com ; Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0 ; GET ; /internet/default/acmecomunication/p/Arch/Arch/index.html ;

,
I would like to parse the line using ; as a separator:



2012-10-10 field #1
09:56:28 field #2
W3SVC field #3
OnPreprocHeaders field #4
192.168.1.10 field #5
blank field #6
blank field #7
blank field #8
site.test.acme.com field #9
Mozilla/5.0 field #10
(X11; Linux x86_64; rv:11.0) field #11
Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0 field #12
GET field #13
/internet/default/acmecomunication/p/Arch/Arch/index.html field #14

I have tried this:

(\d+\-\d+\-\d+) ; (\d+\:\d+\:\d+.) ; (\S+) ; (\S+) ; (\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+) ; ; ; (\S+) ; (\S+)\/(\d+)\.(\d+) (\(.*?\)) (.*\;)

but dosen't work well.

Below the result:

1: 2012-10-10
2: 09:56:28
3: W3SVC
4: OnPreprocHeaders
5: 192.168.1.10
6: site.test.acme.com
7: Mozilla
8: 5
9: 0
10: (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:11.0)
11:Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0 ; GET ; /internet/default/acmecomunication/p/Arch/Arch/index.html ;

Any suggestion?

Thank you

Hi,



Yes, don't use regular expressions. Whatever language you're using, it most certainly has a function/method that will split a string at a separator character.

The only situation where a regex might make sense is when the application that writes these logs is broken and you need to debug it by validating each line. But I guess that's not what you want.

I can use only regular expression.

I was also just going to advise you not to use regexes, but rather a split function (whatever its name in the language you are using).

If you insist on regexes, one of the problem I can see is that you are using capturing parentheses in places where you probably don't want them.

If you want to capture: "Mozilla/5.0", then you should not use:



which will capture that part into 3 fields, but rather something like:

The problem is on the part:"Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0 ; GET ; /internet/default/acmecomunication/p/Arch/Arch/index.html ;"
the reg ex dosen't split the line on tthe character ";"

Replace at the end of your regex:



by:

,

which should capture:

and

Thank you for your rapid response.
Maybe I can't explain what is the problem.
I would like to split the line for every ";" characters.

So the part "Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0 ; GET ; /internet/default/acmecomunication/p/Arch/Arch/index.html ;"

should be splitted in this way:
Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0 ;
GET ;
/internet/default/acmecomunication/p/Arch/Arch/index.html ;

The problem is "greedy matching". When you have this regex:



it will try to match anything from your starting point to the last ';'. This is why I have added negated character classes in the previous regexes I suggested. Just do the same, or use non greedy match (something like (.*?).

Thank you for your patience.

I have tried the entire reg ex (\d+\-\d+\-\d+) ; (\d+\:\d+\:\d+.) ; (\S+) ; (\S+) ; (\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+) ; ; ; (\S+) ; (\S+\/\d+\.\d+) (\([^)]+\)) ((.*?;)*)

on the web http://www.regextester.com/

below the results;

1: (2012-10-10)
2: (09:56:28)
3: (W3SVC)
4: (OnPreprocHeaders)
5: (192.168.1.10)
6: (site.test.acme.com)
7: (Mozilla/5.0)
8: ((X11; Linux x86_64; rv:11.0))
9: (Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0 ; GET ; /internet/default/acmecomunication/p/Arch/Arch/index.html ;)
10: ( /internet/default/acmecomunication/p/Arch/Arch/index.html ;)


point number 9 is not splitten well.

OK, let's take it again.

In the end of your regex,



we have "(\([^)]+\))" matching the "X11;Linux..." part. Forget the end of it.

Now we want to match "Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0 ; "

We want to match everything to the semi-colon.

This can be done again with a negated character class: some word characters, as many characters different from ';' as possible, followed by a space and then a ';'. This can be:



Then again, for the GET part: some word characters, a space and a ';' :



then a whole bunch of characters different from ;, followed by ';':



So, altogether the end of your regex could look like this:



which should work if I did not miss any part or made a mistake on spaces...

The point is that I do not really want to give you the final solution (although now you probably have it), but I want to try to teach you how to use this language and to understand it. So that if I missed something out, you will be able to correct the regex when testing it.