# Use ^ for absolute input paths?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/use-for-absolute-input-paths/301034>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Tags:** filebeat\
**Created:** [March 30, 2022, 6:53am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/use-for-absolute-input-paths/301034 "2022-03-30T06:53:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![anon90868141](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ab992/32.png) [@anon90868141](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/anon90868141)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 6:53am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/use-for-absolute-input-paths/301034/1 "2022-03-30T06:53:54Z")

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Hello,

I recently read about the filebeat filestream input. On prospector.scanner.include\_files, there is an example saying you should use ^ in patterns if they're an absolute path. Does this transfer to the input paths aswell, so that I should use '^/var/log/application/\*.log' for example? I guess the reasoning behind this is better performance, isn't it?

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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:** [April 27, 2022, 8:54am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/use-for-absolute-input-paths/301034/2 "2022-04-27T08:54:44Z")

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