logs should be in text. The last thing you want is to find out that your binary format cannot be decoded due to a bug in the logging or because file got corrupt

logs should be in text. The last thing you want is to find out that your binary format cannot be decoded due to a bug in the logging or because file got corrupted. Not to mention that you won't be able to integrate with a lot of log systems like Splunk and friends. On the other hand, if you have logs, you need to store them in a centralized place and have an aging policy, etc... Grepping is definitely not the answer. Systems like Splunk exist for a reason.