where command usage

The where command is identical to the WHERE clause in the from command.

Typically you use the where command when you want to filter the result of an aggregation or a lookup.

Using wildcards

You can use wildcards to match characters in string values. With the where command, you must use the like function.

• Use the percent ( % ) symbol as a wildcard for matching multiple characters
• Use the underscore ( _ ) character as a wildcard to match a single character

In this example, the where command returns search results for values in the ipaddress field that start with 198.

... | where like(ipaddress, "198.%")

See the like (<str>, <pattern>) function in the list of Comparison and Conditional eval functions.

Comparing two fields

One advantage of the where command is that you can use it to compare two different fields. You cannot do that with the search command. Here are some examples:

Command	Example	Description
Where	... | where IPAddress=clientip	This search looks for events where the field IPAddress is equal to the field clientip.
Where	... | where clientip='ip-address'	This search looks for events where the field clientip is equal to the field ip-address. Because the field ip-address contains a character that is not a-z, A-Z, 0-9, or and underscore ( _ ), it must be enclosed in single quotation marks.
Search	search hostname=host	The search command handles these expressions as a field=value pair. In this example, The host is interpreted as a string value.
Where	... | where clientip="192.0.2.0"	This search looks for events where the field client contains the string value 192.0.2.0.

Predicate expressions

When you specify multiple predicate expressions, you must separate each expression with a logical operator.

The where command evaluation order is different than the evaluation order used with the search command. The search command evaluates OR clauses before AND clauses.

The order in which predicate expressions are evaluated with the where command is:

1. Expressions within parentheses
2. NOT clauses
3. AND clauses
4. OR clauses

Functions

You can use a wide range of functions with the where command. See Overview of SPL2 eval functions.

See also

Where command

where command overview

where command syntax details

where command examples

Other commands

search command overview