cql3::util::maybe_quote() is a utility function formatting an identifier
name (table name, column name, etc.) that needs to be embedded in a CQL
statement - and might require quoting if it contains non-alphanumeric
characters, uppercase characters, or a CQL keyword.
maybe_quote() made an effort to only quote the identifier name if neccessary,
e.g., a lowercase name usually does not need quoting. But lowercase names
that are CQL keywords - e.g., to or where - cannot be used as identifiers
without quoting. This can cause problems for code that wants to generate
CQL statements, such as the materialized-view problem in issue #9450 - where
a user had a column called "to" and wanted to create a materialized view
for it.
So in this patch we fix maybe_quote() to recognize invalid identifiers by
using the CQL parser, and quote them. This will quote reserved keywords,
but not so-called unreserved keywords, which *are* allowed as identifiers
and don't need quoting. This addition slows down maybe_quote(), but
maybe_quote() is anyway only used in heavy operations which need to
generate CQL.
This patch also adds two tests that reproduce the bug and verify its
fix:
1. Add to the low-level maybe_quote() test (a C++ unit test) also tests
that maybe_quote() quotes reserved keywords like "to", but doesn't
quote unreserved keywords like "int".
2. Add a test reproducing issue #9450 - creating a materialized view
whose key column is a keyword. This new test passes on Cassandra,
failed on Scylla before this patch, and passes after this patch.
It is worth noting that maybe_quote() now has a "forward compatiblity"
problem: If we save CQL statements generated by maybe_quote(), and a
future version introduces a new reserved keyword, the parser of the
future version may not be able to parse the saved CQL statement that
was generated with the old mayb_quote() and didn't quote what is now
a keyword. This problem can be solved in two ways:
1. Try hard not to introduced new reserved keywords. Instead, introduce
unreserved keywords. We've been doing this even before recognizing
this maybe_quote() future-compatibility problem.
2. In the next patch we will introduce quote() - which unconditionally
quotes identifier names, even if lowercase. These quoted names will
be uglier for lowercase names - but will be safe from future
introduction of new keywords. So we can consider switching some or
all uses of maybe_quote() to quote().
Fixes#9450
Signed-off-by: Nadav Har'El <nyh@scylladb.com>
Message-Id: <20220118161217.231811-1-nyh@scylladb.com>
(cherry picked from commit 5d2f694a90)
1b550dd301