Assigning temporary elements in rules files

You can create a temporary element in a rules file by assigning it to an expression.

For example:

$tempelement = "message"

An element, $tempelement, is created and assigned the string value message.

If you refer to an element that has not been initialized in this way, the element is set to the null string ("").

The following example creates the element $b and sets it to setnow:

$b="setnow"

The following example then sets the element $a to setnow:

$a=$b

In the following example, temporary elements are used to extract information from a Summary element, which has the string value: The Port is down on Port 1 Board 2.

$temp1 = extract ($Summary, "Port ([0-9]+)")
$temp2 = extract ($Summary, "Board ([0-9]+)")
@AlertKey = $temp1 + "." + $temp2

The extract function is used to assign values to temporary elements temp1 and temp2. Then these elements are concatenated (using the + concatenate operator ) with a . separating them, and assigned to the AlertKey field. After these statements are run, the AlertKey field has the value 1.2.