Using Powershell to search for specific strings in the last x lines of very large log files

Question

I have a requirement that I have not found a solution or assistance for on the forums so far...

The issue: I monitor real time systems and these generate a number of

Answer 1

If you use PowerShell 3.0 or newer, you can use a combination of the get-content and select-string commandlets to get the same functionality. Since version 3.0, get-content support a -tail option that only returns the last n lines of a file in an efficient way. Using this, you can reimplement the Perl script above with the following (searching in the last 1000 lines):

# Returns the number of occurrences
(get-content logfile.txt -Tail 1000 | select-string -pattern "No packet received from EISEC Client").Length