[CASSANDRA-8675] COPY TO/FROM broken for newline characters

• Type: Bug
• Status: Open
• Priority: Normal
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Fix Version/s: 3.0.x
• Component/s: Legacy/Tools
• Labels: cqlsh remove-reopen

Environment

[cqlsh 5.0.1 | Cassandra 2.1.2 | CQL spec 3.2.0 | Native protocol v3]
Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit

• Severity: Normal

Test and Documentation Plan

.

• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Lex Lythius
• Tester: Philip Thompson
• Created: 23/Jan/15 15:34
• Updated: 03/Nov/22 14:21

Description

Exporting/importing does not preserve contents when texts containing newline (and possibly other) characters are involved:

cqlsh:test> create table if not exists copytest (id int primary key, t text);
cqlsh:test> insert into copytest (id, t) values (1, 'This has a newline
        ... character');
cqlsh:test> insert into copytest (id, t) values (2, 'This has a quote " character');
cqlsh:test> insert into copytest (id, t) values (3, 'This has a fake tab \t character (typed backslash, t)');
cqlsh:test> select * from copytest;

 id | t
----+---------------------------------------------------------
  1 |                           This has a newline\ncharacter
  2 |                            This has a quote " character
  3 | This has a fake tab \t character (entered slash-t text)

(3 rows)

cqlsh:test> copy copytest to '/tmp/copytest.csv';

3 rows exported in 0.034 seconds.
cqlsh:test> copy copytest from '/tmp/copytest.csv';

3 rows imported in 0.005 seconds.
cqlsh:test> select * from copytest;

 id | t
----+-------------------------------------------------------
  1 |                          This has a newlinencharacter
  2 |                          This has a quote " character
  3 | This has a fake tab \t character (typed backslash, t)

(3 rows)

I tried replacing \n in the CSV file with
n, which just expands to \n in the table; and with an actual newline character, which fails with error since it prematurely terminates the record.

It seems backslashes are only used to take the following character as a literal

Until this is fixed, what would be the best way to refactor an old table with a new, incompatible structure maintaining its content and name, since we can't rename tables?

Issue Links

• duplicates: CASSANDRA-13609 COPY FROM not handling newlines within field
• duplicates: CASSANDRA-8790 Improve handling of escape sequence for CQL string literals