# Defining filebeat prospector paths with regex? **URL:** \ **Category:** Beats\ **Tags:** filebeat\ **Created:** [April 13, 2016, 9:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/defining-filebeat-prospector-paths-with-regex/47310 "2016-04-13T21:15:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![RobertC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/da6949/32.png) [@RobertC](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/RobertC)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 9:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/defining-filebeat-prospector-paths-with-regex/47310/1 "2016-04-13T21:15:15Z")
Hi, I'm using filebeat 1.2.1 and very happy for the new environment variable feature! Thank you. Another thing that would be very helpful if we could define the prospector paths using regular expressions? That would make configuration management even more straight forward as I wouldn't have to define environment variables for the various paths on each system. The reason is that we have different log file names based on individual systems. Is this worth considering, or is it possibly on the road map already? I realize I can use regex to exclude certain files, so that's an alternative, though maybe less ideal. Thanks, Robert. ---
**Author:** ![steffens](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/steffens/32/79630_2.png) [@steffens](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/steffens)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 12:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/defining-filebeat-prospector-paths-with-regex/47310/2 "2016-04-14T12:03:51Z")
I think the path can be a glob pattern. Not as flexible as full regexes, but most often should do the trick. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 9:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/defining-filebeat-prospector-paths-with-regex/47310/3 "2017-07-05T21:53:16Z")