Hello, I have managed to get my script finished in the end by taking bits from everyone who answered. Thank you so much. the finished query string looks like this (still not the best but it gets the job done. Once I learn to code more with Python I will probably go back to it and re-write it):-
# Log file to work on filetoread = open("/tmp/pdu.log", "r") # Perform filtering in the log file text = filetoread.read() text = text.replace("<G_", "") text = text.replace(".", " ") text = text.replace(r"(", " ") filetoread.close() # File to write output to filetowrite = file("/tmp/pdu_filtered.log", "w") # Write new log file filetowrite.write(text) filetowrite.close() # Read new log and get required fields from it filtered_log = open("/tmp/pdu_filtered.log", "r") filtered_line = filtered_log.readlines() for line in filtered_line: field = line.split(" ") field5 = field[5].rsplit("_", 1) print field5[0], field[14], field[22] print "Done" -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list