implementing Parsing Multi-line Logs in Ruby - Unexpected Line Breaks and Missing Data
Does anyone know how to I'm working on a project and hit a roadblock... I'm maintaining legacy code that I'm stuck on something that should probably be simple... I'm working on a Ruby application where I need to parse multi-line logs for better analysis. The logs contain both single-line and multi-line entries, and I’m specifically having trouble with log entries that break across lines due to long messages. My current approach uses a regex pattern to match log entries, but I’m working with issues where some data is lost, and line breaks are causing unexpected behavior. Here's an example of the log format: ``` INFO 2023-10-03 12:45:67 ModuleA: Everything is working as expected. behavior 2023-10-03 12:46:00 ModuleB: An behavior occurred. Details: This is an behavior that continues on the next line due to its length. INFO 2023-10-03 12:47:00 ModuleC: Another log entry starts here. ``` I initially tried using the following regex to capture each log entry: ```ruby log_pattern = /^(INFO|behavior)\s+(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2})\s+(\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2})\s+([^:]+):\s+(.*)$/ ``` However, this regex fails to capture log entries that span multiple lines, leading to missing data or incorrect formatting in the parsed output. I've also attempted to read the log file line by line and group entries based on timestamps, but the performance has been slow for logs with a important number of entries. Here’s a simplified version of my reading function: ```ruby File.foreach('path/to/log.txt') do |line| if line =~ log_pattern # process log entry end end ``` I’ve considered using a buffer to concatenate lines that follow an `behavior` tag as a potential solution, but I'm unsure how to implement this effectively. Additionally, I worry that this might complicate parsing when log entries are valid single lines. Is there a better approach or library in Ruby that can guide to accurately parse these multi-line logs without losing data? Any suggestions on regex patterns or parsing strategies would be greatly appreciated! I'm working on a CLI tool that needs to handle this. I'm using Ruby stable in this project. This issue appeared after updating to Ruby 3.11. Am I approaching this the right way? Thanks for your help in advance!