Splunk Cloud Platform

Search Reference

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Commands by category

The following tables list all the search commands, categorized by their usage. Some commands fit into more than one category based on the options that you specify.

Correlation

These commands can be used to build correlation searches.

Command Description
append Appends subsearch results to current results.
appendcols Appends the fields of the subsearch results to current results, first results to first result, second to second, etc.
appendpipe Appends the result of the subpipeline applied to the current result set to results.
arules Finds association rules between field values.
associate Identifies correlations between fields.
contingency, counttable, ctable Builds a contingency table for two fields.
correlate Calculates the correlation between different fields.
diff Returns the difference between two search results.
join Combines the results from the main results pipeline with the results from a subsearch.
lookup Explicitly invokes field value lookups.
selfjoin Joins results with itself.
set Performs set operations (union, diff, intersect) on subsearches.
stats Provides statistics, grouped optionally by fields. See Statistical and charting functions.
transaction Groups search results into transactions.

Data and indexes

These commands can be used to learn more about your data, add and delete data sources, or manage the data in your summary indexes.

View data

These commands return information about the data you have in your indexes. They do not modify your data or indexes in any way.

Command Description
audit Returns audit trail information that is stored in the local audit index.
datamodel Return information about a data model or data model object.
dbinspect Returns information about the specified index.
eventcount Returns the number of events in an index.
metadata Returns a list of source, sourcetypes, or hosts from a specified index or distributed search peer.
typeahead Returns typeahead information on a specified prefix.

Manage data

These are some commands you can use to add data sources to or delete specific data from your indexes.

Command Description
delete Delete specific events or search results.

Manage summary indexes

These commands are used to create and manage your summary indexes.

Command Description
collect, stash Puts search results into a summary index.
overlap Finds events in a summary index that overlap in time or have missed events.
sichart Summary indexing version of chart. Computes the necessary information for you to later run a chart search on the summary index.
sirare Summary indexing version of rare. Computes the necessary information for you to later run a rare search on the summary index.
sistats Summary indexing version of stats. Computes the necessary information for you to later run a stats search on the summary index.
sitimechart Summary indexing version of timechart. Computes the necessary information for you to later run a timechart search on the summary index.
sitop Summary indexing version of top. Computes the necessary information for you to later run a top search on the summary index.

Fields

These are commands you can use to add, extract, and modify fields or field values. The most useful command for manipulating fields is eval and its statistical and charting functions.

Add fields

Use these commands to add new fields.

Command Description
accum Keeps a running total of the specified numeric field.
addinfo Add fields that contain common information about the current search.
addtotals Computes the sum of all numeric fields for each result.
delta Computes the difference in field value between nearby results.
eval Calculates an expression and puts the value into a field. See also, evaluation functions.
iplocation Adds location information, such as city, country, latitude, longitude, and so on, based on IP addresses.
lookup For configured lookup tables, explicitly invokes the field value lookup and adds fields from the lookup table to the events.
multikv Extracts field-values from table-formatted events.
rangemap Sets RANGE field to the name of the ranges that match.
strcat Concatenates string values and saves the result to a specified field.

Extract fields

These commands provide different ways to extract new fields from search results.

Command Description
erex Allows you to specify example or counter example values to automatically extract fields that have similar values.
extract, kv Extracts field-value pairs from search results.
kvform Extracts values from search results, using a form template.
rex Specify a Perl regular expression named groups to extract fields while you search.
spath Provides a straightforward means for extracting fields from structured data formats, XML and JSON.
xmlkv Extracts XML key-value pairs.

Modify fields and field values

Use these commands to modify fields or their values.

Command Description
convert Converts field values into numerical values.
filldown Replaces NULL values with the last non-NULL value.
fillnull Replaces null values with a specified value.
makemv Change a specified field into a multivalue field during a search.
nomv Changes a specified multivalue field into a single-value field at search time.
reltime Converts the difference between 'now' and '_time' to a human-readable value and adds adds this value to the field, 'reltime', in your search results.
rename Renames a specified field. Use wildcards to specify multiple fields.
replace Replaces values of specified fields with a specified new value.

Find anomalies

These commands are used to find anomalies in your data. Either search for uncommon or outlying events and fields or cluster similar events together.

Command Description
analyzefields, af Analyze numerical fields for their ability to predict another discrete field.
anomalies Computes an "unexpectedness" score for an event.
anomalousvalue Finds and summarizes irregular, or uncommon, search results.
anomalydetection Identifies anomalous events by computing a probability for each event and then detecting unusually small probabilities.
cluster Clusters similar events together.
kmeans Performs k-means clustering on selected fields.
outlier Removes outlying numerical values.
rare Displays the least common values of a field.

Geographic and location

These commands add geographical information to your search results.

Command Description
iplocation Returns location information, such as city, country, latitude, longitude, and so on, based on IP addresses.
geom Adds a field, named "geom", to each event. This field contains geographic data structures for polygon geometry in JSON and is used for choropleth map visualization. This command requires an external lookup with external_type=geo to be installed.
geomfilter Accepts two points that specify a bounding box for clipping choropleth maps. Points that fall outside of the bounding box are filtered out.
geostats Generate statistics which are clustered into geographical bins to be rendered on a world map.

Metrics

These commands work with metrics data.

Command Description
mcollect Converts events into metric data points and inserts the data points into a metric index on the search head.
meventcollect Converts events into metric data points and inserts the data points into a metric index on indexer tier.
mpreview, msearch Provides samples of the raw metric data points in the metric time series in your metrics indexes. Helps you troubleshoot your metrics data.
mstats Calculates visualization-ready statistics for the measurement, metric_name, and dimension fields in metric indexes.

Prediction and trending

These commands predict future values and calculate trendlines that can be used to create visualizations.

Command Description
predict Enables you to use time series algorithms to predict future values of fields.
trendline Computes moving averages of fields.
x11 Enables you to determine the trend in your data by removing the seasonal pattern.


Reports

These commands are used to build transforming searches. These commands return statistical data tables that are required for charts and other kinds of data visualizations.

Command Description
addtotals Computes the sum of all numeric fields for each result.
autoregress Prepares your events for calculating the autoregression, or moving average, based on a field that you specify.
bin, discretize Puts continuous numerical values into discrete sets.
chart Returns results in a tabular output for charting. See also, Statistical and charting functions.
contingency, counttable, ctable Builds a contingency table for two fields.
correlate Calculates the correlation between different fields.
eventcount Returns the number of events in an index.
eventstats Adds summary statistics to all search results.
gauge Transforms results into a format suitable for display by the Gauge chart types.
makecontinuous Makes a field that is supposed to be the x-axis continuous (invoked by chart/timechart)
mstats Calculates statistics for the measurement, metric_name, and dimension fields in metric indexes.
outlier Removes outlying numerical values.
rare Displays the least common values of a field.
stats Provides statistics, grouped optionally by fields. See also, Statistical and charting functions.
streamstats Adds summary statistics to all search results in a streaming manner.
timechart Create a time series chart and corresponding table of statistics. See also, Statistical and charting functions.
top Displays the most common values of a field.
trendline Computes moving averages of fields.
tstats Performs statistical queries on indexed fields in tsidx files.
untable Converts results from a tabular format to a format similar to stats output. Inverse of xyseries and maketable.
xyseries Converts results into a format suitable for graphing.

Results

These commands can be used to manage search results. For example, you can append one set of results with another, filter more events from the results, reformat the results, and so on.

Alerting

Use this command to email the results of a search.

Command Description
sendemail Emails search results, either inline or as an attachment, to one or more specified email addresses.


Appending

Use these commands to append one set of results with another set or to itself.

Command Description
append Appends subsearch results to current results.
appendcols Appends the fields of the subsearch results to current results, first results to first result, second to second, and so on.
join SQL-like joining of results from the main results pipeline with the results from the subpipeline.
selfjoin Joins results with itself.

Filtering

Use these commands to remove more events or fields from your current results.

Command Description
dedup Removes subsequent results that match a specified criteria.
fields Removes fields from search results.
from Retrieves data from a dataset, such as a data model dataset, a CSV lookup, a KV Store lookup, a saved search, or a table dataset.
mvcombine Combines events in search results that have a single differing field value into one result with a multivalue field of the differing field.
regex Removes results that do not match the specified regular expression.
searchtxn Finds transaction events within specified search constraints.
table Creates a table using the specified fields.
uniq Removes any search that is an exact duplicate with a previous result.
where Performs arbitrary filtering on your data. See also, Evaluation functions.

Formatting

Use these commands to reformat your current results.

Command Description
fieldformat Uses eval expressions to change the format of field values when they are rendered without changing their underlying values. Does not apply to exported data.
transpose Reformats rows of search results as columns. Useful for fixing X- and Y-axis display issues with charts, or for turning sets of data into a series to produce a chart.
untable Converts results from a tabular format to a format similar to stats output. Inverse of xyseries and maketable.
xyseries Converts results into a format suitable for graphing.

Generating

Use these commands to generate or return events.

Command Description
gentimes Returns results that match a time-range.
loadjob Loads events or results of a previously completed search job.
makeresults Creates a specified number of empty search results.
mvexpand Expands the values of a multivalue field into separate events for each value of the multivalue field.
savedsearch Returns the search results of a saved search.
search Searches indexes for matching events. This command is implicit at the start of every search pipeline that does not begin with another generating command.

Grouping

Use these commands to group or classify the current results.

Command Description
cluster Clusters similar events together.
kmeans Performs k-means clustering on selected fields.
mvexpand Expands the values of a multivalue field into separate events for each value of the multivalue field.
transaction Groups search results into transactions.
typelearner Generates suggested eventtypes.
typer Calculates the eventtypes for the search results.

Reordering

Use these commands to change the order of the current search results.

Command Description
head Returns the first number n of specified results.
mvreverse Reverses the order of the values in a multivalue field.
reverse Reverses the order of the results.
sort Sorts search results by the specified fields.
tail Returns the last number N of specified results

Reading

Use these commands to read in results from external files or previous searches.

Command Description
inputcsv Loads search results from the specified CSV file.
inputlookup Loads search results from a specified static lookup table.
loadjob Loads events or results of a previously completed search job.

Writing

Use these commands to define how to output current search results.

Command Description
collect, stash Puts search results into a summary index.
meventcollect Converts events into metric data points and inserts the data points into a metric index on indexer tier.
mcollect Converts events into metric data points and inserts the data points into a metric index on the search head.
outputcsv Outputs search results to a specified CSV file.
outputlookup Writes search results to the specified static lookup table.
outputtext Ouputs the raw text field (_raw) of results into the _xml field.
sendemail Emails search results, either inline or as an attachment, to one or more specified email addresses.

Search

Command Description
localop Run subsequent commands, that is all commands following this, locally and not on a remote peer.
map A looping operator, performs a search over each search result.
redistribute Invokes parallel reduce search processing to shorten the search runtime of a set of supported SPL commands.
search Searches indexes for matching events. This command is implicit at the start of every search pipeline that does not begin with another generating command.
sendemail Emails search results, either inline or as an attachment, to one or more specified email addresses.

Subsearch

These are commands that you can use with subsearches.

Command Description
append Appends subsearch results to current results.
appendcols Appends the fields of the subsearch results to current results, first results to first result, second to second, and so on.
appendpipe Appends the result of the subpipeline applied to the current result set to results.
foreach Runs a templated streaming subsearch for each field in a wildcarded field list.
format Takes the results of a subsearch and formats them into a single result.
join Combine the results of a subsearch with the results of a main search.
return Specify the values to return from a subsearch.
set Performs set operations (union, diff, intersect) on subsearches.

Time

Use these commands to search based on time ranges or add time information to your events.

Command Description
gentimes Returns results that match a time-range.
localize Returns a list of the time ranges in which the search results were found.
reltime Converts the difference between 'now' and '_time' to a human-readable value and adds adds this value to the field, 'reltime', in your search results.
Last modified on 17 November, 2023
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This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk Cloud Platform: 9.0.2209, 8.2.2201, 8.2.2202, 8.2.2203, 9.0.2205, 9.0.2208, 8.2.2112


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