Easily allow disregarding timestamps, etc.

[ibotty]

Of course that can be done with filters before, but it would be easier to be able to specify an option to e.g., ignore changed numbers or timestamp-like data.

I assume simply regexp-changing the string to hash will allow that. It would only need to find nice regular expressions for some common filters.

[ysf]

You mean something like an integrated cut ? Do you have an example usecase? I don't know if I understand it correctly and don't want to agree or rule it out before that.

[ibotty]

I am mostly interested in log file analysis where I sometimes have timestamps in front or random IDs that are irrelevant for the bigger picture. Usually I use a sed 's/.../XXX/ | sort -u`, but that's not optimal.

[ysf]

Would it be helpful if anewer had a parameter that would skip the first x chars of the line? I think this could be done without loosing much performance.