NAME

       Parse::Syslog - Parse Unix syslog files

SYNOPSIS

        my $parser = Parse::Syslog->new( '/var/log/syslog', year => 2001);
        while(my $sl = $parser->next) {
            ... access $sl->{timestamp|host|program|pid|text} ...
        }

DESCRIPTION

       Unix syslogs are convenient to read for humans but because of small differences between
       operating systems and things like 'last message repeated xx times' not very easy to parse
       by a script.

       Parse::Syslog presents a simple interface to parse syslog files: you create a parser on a
       file (with new) and call next to get one line at a time with Unix-timestamp, host,
       program, pid and text returned in a hash-reference.

   Constructing a Parser
       new requires as first argument a source from where to get the syslog lines. It can be:

       •   a file-name for the syslog-file to be parsed.

       •   an IO::Handle object.

       •   a File::Tail object as first argument, in which case the read method will be called to
           get lines to process.

       After the file-name (or File::Tail object), you can specify options as a hash.  The
       following options are defined:

       type    Format of the "syslog" file. Can be one of:

               syslog  Traditional "syslog" (default)

               metalog Metalog (see http://metalog.sourceforge.net/)

       year    Syslog files usually do store the time of the event without year. With this option
               you can specify the start-year of this log. If not specified, it will be set to
               the current year.

       GMT     If this option is set, the time in the syslog will be converted assuming it is GMT
               time instead of local time.

       repeat  Parse::Syslog will by default repeat xx times events that are followed by messages
               like 'last message repeated xx times'. If you set this option to false, it won't
               do that.

       arrayref
               If this option is true, next will return an array-ref instead of a hash-ref (and
               is thus a bit faster), with the following contents:

               0:  timestamp

               1:  host

               2:  program

               3:  pid

               4:  text

       locale  Optional. Specifies an additional locale name or the array of locale names for the
               parsing of log files with national characters.

       allow_future
               If true will allow for timestamps in the future. Otherwise timestamps of one day
               in the future and more will not be returned (as a safety measure against wrong
               configurations, bogus --year arguments, etc.)

   Parsing the file
       The file is parse one line at a time by calling the next method, which returns a hash-
       reference containing the following keys:

       timestamp Unix timestamp for the event.

       host      Host-name where the event did happen.

       program   Program-name of the program that generated the event.

       pid       PID of the Program that generated the event. This information is not always
                 available for every operating system.

       text      Text description of the event.

       msgid     Message numeric identifier, available only on Solaris >= 8 with "message ID
                 generation" enabled".

       facility  Log facility name, available only on Solaris >= 8 with "message ID generation"
                 enabled".

       level     Log level, available only on Solaris >= 8 with "message ID generation" enabled".

   BUGS
       There are many small differences in the syslog syntax between operating systems. This
       module has been tested for syslog files produced by the following operating systems:

           Debian GNU/Linux 2.4 (sid)
           Solaris 2.6
           Solaris 8

       Report problems for these and other operating systems to the author.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (c) 2001, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich.  All Rights Reserved.

LICENSE

       This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR

       David Schweikert <dws@ee.ethz.ch>

HISTORY

        2001-08-12 ds 0.01 first version
        2001-08-19 ds 0.02 fix 'last message repeated xx times', Solaris 8 problems
        2001-08-20 ds 0.03 implemented GMT option, year specification, File::Tail
        2001-10-31 ds 0.04 faster time parsing, implemented 'arrayref' option, better time-increment algorithm
        2002-01-29 ds 0.05 ignore -- MARK -- lines, low-case months, space in program names
        2002-05-02 ds 1.00 HP-UX fixes, parse 'above message repeats xx times'
        2002-05-25 ds 1.01 added support for localized month names (uchum@mail.ru)
        2002-10-28 ds 1.02 fix off-by-one-hour error when running during daylight saving time switch
        2004-01-19 ds 1.03 do not allow future dates (if allow_future is not true)
        2004-07-11 ds 1.04 added support for type 'metalog'
        2005-12-24 ds 1.05 allow passing of a IO::Handle object to new