Question

I have a huge set of log lines and I need to parse each line (so efficiency is very important).

Each log line is of the form

cust_name time_start time_end (IP or URL )*

So ip address, time, time and a possibly empty list of ip addresses or urls separated by semicolons. If there is only ip or url in the last list there is no separator. If there is more than 1, then they are separated by semicolons.

I need a way to parse this line and read it into a data structure. time_start or time_end could be either system time or GMT. cust_name could also have multiple strings separated by spaces.

I can do this by reading character by character and essentially writing my own parser. Is there a better way to do this ?

Answer 1

Maybe Boost RegExp lib will help you. http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_38_0/libs/regex/doc/html/index.html