Ok, an actual post about doing things right, instead of me venting my spleen.
So, let's talk about logging messages.
When writing logging messages for technical use - monitoring, statistics, etc, pick a separating character that is not part of the various fields you have interest in.
For example, most log messages will include a timestamp, so use of ':' is out. Likewise, if the timestamps include the date, the '/' or '-' is right out.
A good choice for the field divider is the '|', and then the use of spaces as separation of the subfields.
