The current docs require a space to separate the symbol from the semantic in a grok patterns file.
This makes the patterns file less readable than it could be. Can we consider changing the spec from " " to the equivalent of "\s+"?
One benefit is it makes the pattern file prettier and more readable, for those that want that.
One concern is that it makes it harder to have leading spaces in your semantics. But, since you don't have to use " " for spaces in the semantic, there is an easy solution.
Another consideration is the idea of cut-n-paste, which is how this came up. Currently, grok accepts a tab between symbol and semantic. But, if you cut-n-paste a pattern, spaces seem to replace the tab, and this could break something (and does break one of the Grok debuggers), so it seems the standard needs to accept one or more spaces. And, this standard could then be followed with clarity by other applications in the Grok world.
Thanks for considering this idea.
Brian