Processing Functions

Distill provides analysts with three main processing functions: one function for searching UserALE logs and two functions that help to transform iterables into tuples. These functions are described below:

Search

Distill’s search function, find_meta_values, uses list comprehension to list out all the unique values for a specific key in a dictionary. This can be particularly useful when attempting to list out unique values in UserALE logs. An example usage of this function can be seen below:

# Sorted dictionary of UserALE logs
sorted_dict

# List of unique values for the target field
target_vals = distill.find_meta_values('target', sorted_dict, unique=True)

Transform

Distill’s transformation functions: pairwiseStag and pairwiseSeq, create tuples based on an iterable series or list. These tuples can then be used as edge lists. Example usages of both of these functions can be seen below:

test_list = [1, 2, 3, 4]

stag_result = distill.pairwiseStag(test_list)   # [(1, 2), (3, 4)]
seq_result = distill.pairwiseSeq(test_list)     # [(1, 2), (2, 3), (3, 4)]