Apache Log Parsing with Python

import re
from collections import defaultdict, named tuple

format_pat= re.compile( 
    r"(?P<host>[\d\.]+)\s" 
    r"(?P<identity>\S*)\s" 
    r"(?P<user>\S*)\s"
    r"\[(?P<time>.*?)\]\s"
    r'"(?P<request>.*?)"\s'
    r"(?P<status>\d+)\s"
    r"(?P<bytes>\S*)\s"
    r'"(?P<referer>.*?)"\s' # [SIC]
    r'"(?P<user_agent>.*?)"\s*' 
)

Access = namedtuple('Access',
    ['host', 'identity', 'user', 'time', 'request',
    'status', 'bytes', 'referer', 'user_agent'] )

def access_iter( source_iter ):
    for log in source_iter:
        for line in (l.rstrip() for l in log):
            match= format_pat.match(line)
            if match:
                yield Access( **match.groupdict() )

1. The adjacent string concatenation means that the regular expression can be broken up into bits to make it readable.
2. When the named tuple attributes match the regular expression names, we can trivially turn the match.groupdict() into a named tuple. 
3. By using a generator, the other parts of the application can simply loop through the results without tying up memory to create vast intermediate structures.