NAME | OVERVIEW | LEXICAL STRUCTURE | EXPRESSION SYNTAX | VIRTUAL FIELDS | SEMANTICS | EXAMPLES | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | AUTHOR | COLOPHON

AUSEARCH-EXPRESSION(5)           Linux Audit          AUSEARCH-EXPRESSION(5)

NAME         top

       ausearch-expression - audit search expression format

OVERVIEW         top

       This man page describes the format of "ausearch expressions".
       Parsing and evaluation of these expressions is provided by libauparse
       and is common to applications that use this library.

LEXICAL STRUCTURE         top

       White space (ASCII space, tab and new-line characters) between tokens
       is ignored.  The following tokens are recognized:
       Punctuation
              ( ) \
       Logical operators
              ! && ||
       Comparison operators
              < <= == > >= !== i= i!= r= r!=
       Unquoted strings
              Any non-empty sequence of ASCII letters, digits, and the _
              symbol.
       Quoted strings
              A sequence of characters surrounded by the " quotes.  The \
              character starts an escape sequence.  The only defined escape
              sequences are \\ and \".  The semantics of other escape
              sequences is undefined.
       Regexps
              A sequence of characters surrounded by the / characters.  The
              \ character starts an escape sequence.  The only defined
              escape sequences are \\ and \/.  The semantics of other escape
              sequences is undefined.
       Anywhere an unquoted string is valid, a quoted string is valid as
       well, and vice versa.  In particular, field names may be specified
       using quoted strings, and field values may be specified using
       unquoted strings.

EXPRESSION SYNTAX         top

       The primary expression has one of the following forms:
              field comparison-operator value
              \regexp string-or-regexp
       field is either a string, which specifies the first field with that
       name within the current audit record, or the \ escape character
       followed by a string, which specifies a virtual field with the
       specified name (virtual fields are defined in a later section).
       field is a string.  operator specifies the comparison to perform
       r= r!= Get the "raw" string of field, and compare it to value.  For
              fields in audit records, the "raw" string is the exact string
              stored in the audit record (with all escaping and unprintable
              character encoding left alone); applications can read the
              "raw" string using auparse_get_field_str(3).  Each virtual
              field may define a "raw" string.  If field is not present or
              does not define a "raw" string, the result of the comparison
              is false (regardless of the operator).
       i= i!= Get the "interpreted" string of field, and compare it to
              value.  For fields in audit records, the "interpreted" string
              is an "user-readable" interpretation of the field value;
              applications can read the "interpreted" string using
              auparse_interpret_field(3).  Each virtual field may define an
              "interpreted" string.  If field is not present or does not
              define an "interpreted" string, the result of the comparison
              is false (regardless of the operator).
       < <= == > >= !==
              Evaluate the "value" of field, and compare it to value.  A
              "value" may be defined for any field or virtual field, but no
              "value" is currently defined for any audit record field.  The
              rules of parsing value for comparing it with the "value" of
              field are specific for each field.  If field is not present,
              the result of the comparison is false (regardless of the
              operator).  If field does not define a "value", an error is
              reported when parsing the expression.
       In the special case of \regexp regexp-or-string, the current audit
       record is taken as a string (without interpreting field values), and
       matched against regexp-or-string.  regexp-or-string is an extended
       regular expression, using a string or regexp token (in other words,
       delimited by " or /).
       If E1 and E2 are valid expressions, then !  E1, E1 && E2, and E1 ||
       E2 are valid expressions as well, with the usual C semantics and
       evaluation priorities.  Note that !  field op value is interpreted as
       !(field op value), not as (!field) op value.

VIRTUAL FIELDS         top

       The following virtual fields are defined:
       \timestamp
              The value is the timestamp of the current event.  value must
              have the ts:seconds.milli format, where seconds and milli are
              decimal numbers specifying the seconds and milliseconds part
              of the timestamp, respectively.
       \record_type
              The value is the type of the current record.  value is either
              the record type name, or a decimal number specifying the type.

SEMANTICS         top

       The expression as a whole applies to a single record.  The expression
       is true for a specified event if it is true for any record associated
       with the event.

EXAMPLES         top

       As a demonstration of the semantics of handling missing fields, the
       following expression is true if field is present:
              (field r= "") || (field r!= "")
       and the same expression surrounded by !( and ) is true if field is
       not present.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS         top

       New escape sequences for quoted strings may be defined.
       For currently defined virtual fields that do not define a "raw" or
       "interpreted" string, the definition may be added.  Therefore, don't
       rely on the fact that comparing the "raw" or "interpreted" string of
       the field with any value is false.
       New formats of value constants for the \timestamp virtual field may
       be added.

AUTHOR         top

       Miloslav Trmac

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the audit (Linux Audit) project.  Information
       about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://people.redhat.com/sgrubb/audit/⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, send it to linux-audit@redhat.com.  This page
       was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository 
       ⟨https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace.git⟩ on 2017-07-05.
       If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the
       page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the information
       in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page),
       send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
Red Hat                           Feb 2008            AUSEARCH-EXPRESSION(5)

Pages that refer to this page: ausearch_add_expression(3)ausearch_add_interpreted_item(3)ausearch_add_item(3)ausearch_add_timestamp_item(3)ausearch_add_timestamp_item_ex(3)