# Filebeat exclude lines that start with '+'

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-exclude-lines-that-start-with/54466>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Created:** [June 30, 2016, 8:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-exclude-lines-that-start-with/54466 "2016-06-30T20:00:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kd5dbl](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/kd5dbl/32/10450_2.png) [@kd5dbl](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kd5dbl)\
**Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 8:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-exclude-lines-that-start-with/54466/1 "2016-06-30T20:00:22Z")

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Hi all... i'm trying to use Filebeat (v1.2.3) to exclude all log lines that start with a '+' (plus sign)...

I've tried;

```
  exclude_lines: ["^\+"]

```

I get the error;

```
Loading config file error: YAML config parsing failed on /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml: yaml: line 36: found unknown escape character. Exiting.

```

Can someone help me figure out how to explain this to filebeat?

Thanks!

--  
David

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<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [July 1, 2016, 9:41am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-exclude-lines-that-start-with/54466/2 "2016-07-01T09:41:29Z")

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the config file format is yaml and yaml has some rules how strings are handled. 5 in total. Plus the `\`` character is treated as escape character in yaml too. When writing regular expressions always use single quotes (like`'`) instead of double quote (like`"`). This disables the yaml parser from interpreting``.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kd5dbl](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/kd5dbl/32/10450_2.png) [@kd5dbl](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kd5dbl)\
**Post date:** [July 1, 2016, 1:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-exclude-lines-that-start-with/54466/3 "2016-07-01T13:55:58Z")

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Awsome! Thanks for the help!

--  
David

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 21, 2016, 8:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-exclude-lines-that-start-with/54466/4 "2016-07-21T20:00:26Z")

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