understanding the meaning of some words

[hisoka]

I would like to know what does these words mean . A simple and understandable definition :

 

banning script . What does it mean ?

 

log file parsing . What does it mean ?

 

IP address locking out . What does it mean ?

[Ingolme]

I assume a "banning script" is a script somebody created to ban people from their website.

 

"log file parsing" would refer to having a program read and interpret a log file.

 

The lock out an IP address means to prevent users with a particular IP address from seeing your website.

 

You really should provide more context for the terms you're finding.

[hisoka]

good explanation . I understood . I have some requests :

 

 

"log file parsing" would refer to having a program read and interpret a log file

 

 

1) What is the need to have a program reading and interpreting a log file ? and especially what is the need to interpret or execute a log file ?

 

The lock out an IP address means to prevent users with a particular IP address from seeing your website.

 

 

it means blocking a user IP . If w3schools forum blocks my IP and then I put

 

http://w3schools.invisionzone.com in the browser address bar , then what happens ? I get a blank page or a page in which it is written access denied ? or the connection walks until it time out ? or I get server not found or I can see the w3schools forum home page but I will not be able to login ?

[justsomeguy]

What is the need to have a program reading and interpreting a log file ?

You can't think of any situation where a program might need to read a file and make sense of what is inside it? It doesn't really matter if it's a "log file" or not. Any file where the contents are defined by a specific structure needs to be parsed according to that structure, to get the data in the intended format. You can't imagine a situation where that might be useful?

 

what happens ? I get a blank page or a page in which it is written access denied ? or the connection walks until it time out ? or I get server not found or I can see the w3schools forum home page but I will not be able to login ?

Any of those are possible depending on how the IP block was implemented. If it is blocked at the firewall level, for example, then you wouldn't even connect to the server.

[Ingolme]

1) What is the need to have a program reading and interpreting a log file ? and especially what is the need to interpret or execute a log file ?

 

 

I don't know, there are a multitude of possible reasons. Perhaps we can find out the intentions behind it if you tell us where you read about parsing log files.

[hisoka]

You can't imagine a situation where that might be useful?

 

It is not that I cannot imagine the situation . The situation is not well understood to me .

 

Perhaps we can find out the intentions behind it if you tell us where you read about parsing log files.

 

I did not read it anywhere . I am writing in general .

 

there are a multitude of possible reasons

 

Generally speaking , could you please enumerate them ? What are the reasons of interpreting or parsing a log file?

[Ingolme]

You are not writing in general, you are asking specific questions.

 

How can you ask for the meaning of words if you did not read them somewhere? Where did you read about parsing log files?

[justsomeguy]

What are the reasons of interpreting or parsing a log file?

C'mon, this isn't hard to think about. Look, here is part of a log file generated by an FTP server:

 

May  8 11:22:23 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [INFO] New connection from 120.76.103.188
May  8 11:22:27 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [WARNING] Authentication failed for user [anonymous]
May  8 11:22:28 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [INFO] Logout.
May  8 11:22:28 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [INFO] New connection from 120.76.103.188
May  8 11:22:33 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [WARNING] Authentication failed for user [ruralmetro]
May  8 11:22:34 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [INFO] Logout.
May  8 11:23:05 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [INFO] New connection from 120.76.103.188
May  8 11:23:14 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [WARNING] Authentication failed for user [onlinelearning]
May  8 11:23:14 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [INFO] Logout.

You should be able to look at that and the format should be pretty obvious. You can break each line up by spaces, or actually those are probably tabs.

 

The first several items on the line are the date and time information. After that, the server name. After that, the FTP program. Then a colon. Then, in parentheses, the IP address (with "?@" before it, I'm not going to read the pure-ftp documentation to look up what those characters mean). Then, in square brackets, the message type or level ("WARNING", "INFO", etc). Then the actual message, until the end of the line. In the case of an authentication failed message, it also includes the attempted username in square brackets.

 

So, what do you do if you're writing a program to figure out how many IPs tried to connect? Or how many authentication failures there were? Or the most popular IPs that connected? Or the most frequent usernames that had failed logins? Or any number of other things (and, no, I am not going to enumerate every possible metric you might want to pull from those log entries; use your imagination). How do you get that information? YOU PARSE THE LOG ENTRIES TO SEPARATE OUT EACH PIECE OF INFORMATION.

[hisoka]

So based on the example you gave me , by parsing a log file you mean writing data to a a log file and separating or arranging it in a way that it is clearly understandable and good organized ? is this what you mean Justsomeguy ? and consequently what is meant by parsing a log file ?

[hisoka]

Where did you read about parsing log files?

 

From my imagination , I put parsing log file in the search box in google . I did not read it any where really

[justsomeguy]

No. Parsing is reading, not writing.

[hisoka]

No. Parsing is reading, not writing.

 

First thank you for correcting me . Parsing is reading and by reading it is meant like in this URL :

 

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/read.html

 

Copying data to a file or storing data in a file lets say log file . So the answer to my question . what does parse a log file mean

 

storing data in a well formatted and clear way . I am right or wrong ?

[justsomeguy]

Storing is writing. Parsing is not done when you write data, it is done when you read it. The point is to break up the data into something you can use.

[hisoka]

So the data read to a log file is parsed or broken up so that when we open the log file to see what is inside it , it looks like this :

May 8 11:22:23 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [INFO] New connection from 120.76.103.188
May 8 11:22:27 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [WARNING] Authentication failed for user [anonymous]
May 8 11:22:28 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [INFO] Logout.
May 8 11:22:28 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [INFO] New connection from 120.76.103.188
May 8 11:22:33 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [WARNING] Authentication failed for user [ruralmetro]
May 8 11:22:34 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [INFO] Logout.
May 8 11:23:05 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [INFO] New connection from 120.76.103.188
May 8 11:23:14 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [WARNING] Authentication failed for user [onlinelearning]
May 8 11:23:14 server5 pure-ftpd: (?@120.76.103.188) [INFO] Logout.

well organized , in order and clear . Right or wrong ?

 

Parsing is done in the same time with reading or before ? I mean data are parsed then read to log file or parsed meanwhile it is being read ?

 

What happens if data is not parsed and read to a log file ? what happens if it is being read without being parsed ?

 

it will look like this :

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  ÿE‰,$è¿$ öÄ0„  ‰,$è®$ öÄ@…  ‹˜   …É„Ö  Ç$    è[ R‹]4ûA   ië
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  ‹UT‹L$8Š  Š  ‹Bdƒø ‡  zh‰ÎƒøƒT
  1Ò¨tf‹f‰º   ¨tŠˆÇED    ÇE4    ¾    éqþÿÿû€   „$  ^  ƒßÿÿƒø‡ï   ‹…È   ¨„©  ‹•À   ‹²œ   …öt¨…‘  ‹}T—ð   ‰T$8ûp   „“  ûq   „  ûr   „°  ‹E<‹p‹‡  ‡  xÿÿ?  †

??

[justsomeguy]

So the data read to a log file is parsed or broken up so that when we open the log file to see what is inside it , it looks like this :

No, the data is read from a log file, then parsed so that it's usable for some other purpose other than just a string of text.

 

Parsing is done in the same time with reading or before ?

After. You read the data, then you parse it. When your browser runs a Javascript file it opens the file, reads the code, parses it, and executes it.

 

What happens if data is not parsed and read to a log file ? what happens if it is being read without being parsed ?

I don't know how to answer that. Parsing is not some inherent required part of reading data. Maybe it doesn't need to be parsed.

[hisoka]

ok so let's say that what you mean is these three links :

 

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Programming_Languages/Parsing
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/parse
http://nathansuniversity.com/pegs.html

 

in the last link it written :

 

Parsing is the general problem of turning raw text into structured data. In the case of parsing programming languages, parsing converts the text the programmer writes into an abstract syntax tree

 

what is the need to turn a program written by a programmer into structured data before being compiled ? Why we do not compile the program directly ?

[justsomeguy]

Parsing is when the code gets analyzed so that the compiler or interpreter knows what the code is doing and can start to compile or execute it. The reason is to convert the source code into a structure that is far more efficient for the computer to use.