# Two different date formats from logs. Handle with one multiline.pattern?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/two-different-date-formats-from-logs-handle-with-one-multiline-pattern/290402>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Tags:** filebeat\
**Created:** [November 29, 2021, 8:19am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/two-different-date-formats-from-logs-handle-with-one-multiline-pattern/290402 "2021-11-29T08:19:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![alexander.jansson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/71e660/32.png) [@alexander.jansson](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/alexander.jansson)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2021, 8:19am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/two-different-date-formats-from-logs-handle-with-one-multiline-pattern/290402/1 "2021-11-29T08:19:01Z")

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Hi,

I'm trying to match two different time formats within different application logs (two out of five use ISO8601, the other three DD-MM-YYYY HH:mm:ss,mmm.

I figured I'd be able to solve it like this:

```auto
  multiline.pattern: '^${timestamp}'
  multiline.negate: true
  multiline.match: after
  
  encoding: iso8859-1

  patterns:
    timestamp: '$(${timestamp1}|${timestamp2})'
    # capture dates of type '2017-01-01 01:02:03.456'
    timestamp1: '^(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2} \d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}.\d{3}'
    # capture iso8601 datetime '2021-11-25T14:40:07.5582771+01:00|'
    timestamp2: '^(?>\d\d){1,2}-(?:0?[1-9]|1[0-2])-(?:(?:0[1-9])|(?:[12][0-9])|(?:3[01])|[1-9])[T](?:2[0123]|[01]?[0-9]):(?:[0-5][0-9]):(?:(?:[0-5]?[0-9]|60)(?:[:.,][0-9]+)?)(?:Z|[+-](?:2[0123]|[01]?[0-9])(?::?(?:[0-5][0-9])))'

```

But this generates an error:

> 2021-11-29T09:11:55.009+0100 ERROR instance/beat.go:989 Exiting: Failed to start crawler: starting input failed: Error while initializing input: cyclic reference detected for key: 'timestamp' accessing 'filebeat.inputs.0.multiline.pattern' (source:'filebeat.yml')  
> Exiting: Failed to start crawler: starting input failed: Error while initializing input: cyclic reference detected for key: 'timestamp' accessing 'filebeat.inputs.0.multiline.pattern' (source:'filebeat.yml'

Any ideas as to why the intended solution doesn't work? Or am I going at this from the wrong perspective?

---

<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:** [December 27, 2021, 10:19am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/two-different-date-formats-from-logs-handle-with-one-multiline-pattern/290402/2 "2021-12-27T10:19:53Z")

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