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Asked: 2026-05-15T20:40:17+00:00

I’ve currently got a bash script that parses /var/log/mail.log to determine the last login

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I’ve currently got a bash script that parses /var/log/mail.log to determine the last login time/date of a imap user. I’ve determined Perl is going to be a lot more efficient and quicker for this task, especially as the logs grow.

Given the following example /var/log/mail.log file:

Jul  5 06:57:54 mail-04 dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<user@foobar.com.au>, method=PLAIN, rip=192.168.x.x, lip=192.168.x.x
Jul  5 06:59:54 mail-04 dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<user@foobar.com.au>, method=PLAIN, rip=192.168.x.x, lip=192.168.x.x
Jul  5 06:59:59 mail-04 dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<otheruser@foobar.com.au>, method=PLAIN, rip=192.168.x.x, lip=192.168.x.x
Jul  5 07:01:54 mail-04 dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<user@foobar.com.au>, method=PLAIN, rip=192.168.x.x, lip=192.168.x.x
Jul  5 07:01:59 mail-04 dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<otheruser@foobar.com.au>, method=PLAIN, rip=192.168.x.x, lip=192.168.x.x

What is the most efficient way in Perl to print the last login time of each unique user? E.g. the expected output should be:

user@foobar.com.au last imap-login: Jul 5 07:01:54
otheruser@foobar.com.au last imap-login: Jul 5 07:01:59
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team
    perl -ne '$l{$2}=$1 if /^(.{15}) .* imap-login: Login: user=<([^>]+)>/; END { print "$_ last imap-login: $l{$_}\n" for keys %l }' /var/log/mail.log
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