The application administrator defines (in the configuration file) the absolute pathname that is used as the prefix of the name of the userlog (3c) error message file on each machine. The userlog(3c) function creates a date—in the form mmddyy , representing the month, day, and year—and adds this date to the pathname prefix, forming the full filename of the central event log. A new file is created daily. Thus, if a process sends messages to the central event log on succeeding days, the messages are written into different files.