When using log4perl, the debug log layout that I'm using is :
log4perl.appender.D10.layout=PatternLayout
log4perl.appender.D10.layout.ConversionPattern=%d [pid=%P] %p %F{1} (%L) %M %m%n
log4perl.appender.D10.Filter = DebugAndUp
This produces very verbose debug logs, for example:
2008/11/26 11:57:28 [pid=25485] DEBUG SomeModule.pm (331) functions::SomeModule::Test Test XXX was successfull
2008/11/26 11:57:29 [pid=25485] ERROR SomeOtherUnrelatedModule.pm (99999) functions::SomeModule::AnotherTest AnotherTest YYY has faled
This works great, and provides excellent debugging data.
However, each line of the debug log contains different function names, pid length, etc. This makes each line layout differently, and makes reading debug logs much harder than it needs to be.
Is there a way in log4perl to format the line so that the debugging metadata (everything up until the actual log message) be padded at the end with spaces/tabs, and have the actual message start at the same column of text?
You can pad the single fields that make up your entries. For example [pid=%5P] will always give you at least 5 characters for the PID.
The "Quantify Placeholders" section in the docs for Log::Log4perl::Layout gives more details.