BBEdit for Log Analysis

Long-time Mac users will undoubtedly have heard of BBEdit. BBEdit is the favorite Mac text editor of many old Mac users 1 for various types of writing, including programming, notes, articles, and basically any type of writing Mac nerds can do.

Personally, I wouldn’t program using BBEdit. Visual Studio Code and offshoots like Cursor are much better for that. I wouldn’t write this blog post in it. That’s what I use Bear for. And, in my humble-ish opinion, they’re much better at those tasks than BBEdit is.

But there is a specific use that BBEdit can’t be topped for on the Mac – log file analysis. It’s like BBEdit was made specifically for it.

Here’s a UTM firewall packet filter log containing all entries for a given day, downloaded right from the UTM’s log file interface.

If I want to lo…