rename

Description

Use the rename command to rename one or more fields. This command is useful for giving fields more meaningful names, such as "Product ID" instead of "pid". If you want to rename fields with similar names, you can use a wildcard character. See the Usage section.

Syntax

rename <wc-field> AS <wc-field>...

Required arguments

wc-field

Syntax: <string>

Description: The name of a field and the name to replace it. Field names with spaces must be enclosed in quotation marks. You can use the asterisk ( * ) as a wildcard to specify a list of fields with similar names. For example, if you want to specify all fields that start with "value", you can use a wildcard such as value*.value*.

Usage

The rename command is a distributable streaming command. See Command types.

Rename with a phrase

Use quotation marks when you rename a field with a phrase.

... | rename SESSIONID AS "The session ID"

Rename multiple, similarly named fields

Use wildcards to rename multiple fields.

... | rename *ip AS *IPaddress

If both the source and destination fields are wildcard expressions with the same number of wildcards, the renaming will carry over the wildcarded portions to the destination expression. See Examples.

You cannot rename one field with multiple names

You cannot rename one field with multiple names. For example if you have field A, you cannot specify | rename A as B, A as C. This rule also applies to other commands where you can rename fields, such as the stats command.

The following example is not valid.

... | stats first(host) AS site, first(host) AS report

You cannot merge multiple fields into one field

You cannot use the rename command to merge multiple fields into one field because null, or non-present, fields are brought along with the values.

For example, if you have events with either product_id or pid fields, ... | rename pid AS product_id would not merge the pid values into the product_id field. It overwrites product_id with Null values where pid does not exist for the event. See the eval command and coalesce() function.

Renaming a field that does not exist

Renaming a field can cause loss of data.

Suppose you rename fieldA to fieldB, but fieldA does not exist.

• If fieldB does not exist, nothing happens.
• If fieldB does exist, the result of the rename is that the data in fieldB is removed. The data in fieldB will contain null values.

Examples

Example 1:

Rename the "_ip" field to "IPAddress".

... | rename _ip AS IPAddress

Example 2:

Rename fields beginning with "foo" to begin with "bar".

... | rename foo* AS bar*

Example 3:

Rename the "count" field. Names with spaces must be enclosed in quotation marks.

... | rename count AS "Count of Events"

See also

fields, replace, table