Creates a field with the name of the parameter field setting its value to value. If the field already exists on an event the field keeps its existing value.

ParameterTypeRequiredDefaultDescription
fieldstring or arraytrue The field or fields to set the default value for. An array of multiple field names can be passed to this parameter.
replaceEmptybooleanfalsefalseIf the field's value is the empty string, override the value with the default.
valuestringtrue The default value that will be assigned to field if not already set. [a]

[a] If an argument name is not given, value is the default argument.

default() Examples

Set the default value of the fields minutes, seconds and hours to 0 so it can be used in a calculation. If we did not do this, the event would be discarded during the eval step because eval() requires all used fields to be present.

You can set an array as the field parameter. This will allow setting the same default value for multiple fields with a single command.

logscale
default(field=[minutes, seconds, hours], 0)

Another example of convenient use of array as the field parameter would be:

logscale
default(field=[url, uri, link], "localhost")

You can use the field operator =~ and default parameter (value) to write it as:

logscale
minutes ~= default(0)

By default empty values are kept as the field does indeed exist when it has the empty value. You can set replaceEmpty to true to replace empty values with the default as well.

logscale
default(field=message, value="N/A", replaceEmpty=true)