miller/doc/faq.html
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<center> <titleinbody> FAQ </titleinbody> </center>
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<center><b>Contents:</b></center>
&bull;&nbsp;<a href="#No_output_at_all">No output at all</a><br/>
&bull;&nbsp;<a href="#Fields_not_selected">Fields not selected</a><br/>
&bull;&nbsp;<a href="#Error-output_in_certain_string_cases">Error-output in certain string cases</a><br/>
&bull;&nbsp;<a href="#How_do_I_parse_log-file_output?">How do I parse log-file output?</a><br/>
&bull;&nbsp;<a href="#How_do_I_examine_then-chaining?">How do I examine then-chaining?</a><br/>
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<p/>
<a id="No_output_at_all"/><h1>No output at all</h1>
<p/>Check the line-terminators of the data, e.g. with the command-line
<tt>file</tt> program. Example: for CSV, Miller&rsquo;s default line terminator
is CR/LF (carriage return followed by linefeed, following
<a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180">RFC4180</a>). Yet if your CSV has
*nix-standard LF line endings, Miller will keep reading the file looking for a
CR/LF which never appears. Solution in this case: tell Miller the input has LF line-terminator, e.g. <tt>mlr --csv --rs
lf {remaining arguments ...}</tt>.
<a id="Fields_not_selected"/><h1>Fields not selected</h1>
<p/>Check the field-separators of the data, e.g. with the command-line
<tt>head</tt> program. Example: for CSV, Miller&rsquo;s default record
separator is comma; if your data is tab-delimited, e.g. <tt>aTABbTABc</tt>,
then Miller won&rsquo;t find three fields named <tt>a</tt>, <tt>b</tt>, and
<tt>c</tt> but rather just one named <tt>aTABbTABc</tt>. Solution in this
case: <tt>mlr --fs tab {remaining arguments ...}</tt>.
<a id="Error-output_in_certain_string_cases"/><h1>Error-output in certain string cases</h1>
<p/> <tt>mlr put '$y = string($x); $z=$y.$y'</tt> gives <tt>(error)</tt> on
numeric data such as <tt>x=123</tt> while <tt>mlr put
'$z=string($x).string($x)'</tt> does not. This is because in the former case
<tt>y</tt> is computed and stored as a string, then re-parsed as an integer,
for which string-concatenation is an invalid operator.
<a id="How_do_I_parse_log-file_output?"/><h1>How do I parse log-file output?</h1>
<p/>Suppose you have log-file lines such as
<p/>
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<pre>
2015-10-08 08:29:09,445 INFO com.company.path.to.ClassName @ [sometext] various/sorts/of data {&amp; punctuation} hits=1 status=0 time=2.378
</pre>
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<p/>
I prefer to pre-filter with <tt>grep</tt> and/or <tt>sed</tt> to extract the structured text, then hand that to Miller. Example:
<p/>
<div class="pokipanel">
<pre>
grep 'various sorts' *.log | sed 's/.*} //' | mlr --fs space --repifs stats1 -a min,p10,p50,p90,max -f time -g status
</pre>
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<p/>
<a id="How_do_I_examine_then-chaining?"/><h1>How do I examine then-chaining?</h1>
<p/>Then-chaining found in Miller is intended to function the same as Unix
pipes. You can print your data one pipeline step at a time, to see what
intermediate
output at one step becomes the input to the next step.
<p/>First, review the input data:
<p/>
<div class="pokipanel">
<pre>
$ cat data/then-example.csv
Status,Payment_Type,Amount
paid,cash,10.00
pending,debit,20.00
paid,cash,50.00
pending,credit,40.00
paid,debit,30.00
</pre>
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<p/>
Next, run the first step of your command, omitting anything from the first <tt>then</tt> onward:
<p/>
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<pre>
$ mlr --icsv --rs lf --opprint count-distinct -f Status,Payment_Type data/then-example.csv
Status Payment_Type count
paid cash 2
pending debit 1
pending credit 1
paid debit 1
</pre>
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<p/>
After that, run it with the next <tt>then</tt> step included:
<p/>
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<pre>
$ mlr --icsv --rs lf --opprint count-distinct -f Status,Payment_Type then sort -nr count data/then-example.csv
Status Payment_Type count
paid cash 2
pending debit 1
pending credit 1
paid debit 1
</pre>
</div>
<p/>
Now if you include another <tt>then</tt> step after this, the columns <tt>Status</tt>,
<tt>Payment_Type</tt>, and <tt>count</tt> will be its input.
<p/>Note, by the way, that you&rsquo;ll get the same results using pipes:
<p/>
<div class="pokipanel">
<pre>
$ mlr --csv --rs lf count-distinct -f Status,Payment_Type data/then-example.csv | mlr --icsv --rs lf --opprint sort -nr count
Status Payment_Type count
paid cash 2
pending debit 1
pending credit 1
paid debit 1
</pre>
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