Allow writing table name as a string literal

[hendrik-m]

Changelog category (leave one):

• Improvement

Changelog entry (a user-readable short description of the changes that goes to CHANGELOG.md):

Add support for string literals as table name. Closes #52178

Documentation entry for user-facing changes

• Documentation is written (mandatory for new features)

• Motivation: Why is this function, table engine, etc. useful to ClickHouse users?
  Supporting string literals is more convenient to use as it does not require quoting.

• Example use: A query or command.

clickhouse-local --query "SELECT * FROM 'dataset.avro'"

[CLAassistant]

All committers have signed the CLA.

[tavplubix]

Could you please update AST Fuzzer so it will replace table name identifiers with string literals sometimes?

[alexey-milovidov]

There is a complication: this code allows parsing a string literal as an identifier in every context. It can be undesirable. I expect to allow it only when we expect a table name.

[alexey-milovidov]

This is a low-level function, but we also have ParserStringLiteral; maybe it will fit better.

[robot-clickhouse-ci-2]

This is an automated comment for commit b53084c with description of existing statuses. It's updated for the latest CI running
The full report is available here
The overall status of the commit is 🔴 failure

Check name	Description	Status
AST fuzzer	Runs randomly generated queries to catch program errors. The build type is optionally given in parenthesis. If it fails, ask a maintainer for help	🟢 success
CI running	A meta-check that indicates the running CI. Normally, it's in success or pending state. The failed status indicates some problems with the PR	🟢 success
ClickHouse build check	Builds ClickHouse in various configurations for use in further steps. You have to fix the builds that fail. Build logs often has enough information to fix the error, but you might have to reproduce the failure locally. The cmake options can be found in the build log, grepping for cmake. Use these options and follow the general build process	🟢 success
Compatibility check	Checks that clickhouse binary runs on distributions with old libc versions. If it fails, ask a maintainer for help	🟢 success
Docker image for servers	The check to build and optionally push the mentioned image to docker hub	🟢 success
Docs Check	Builds and tests the documentation	🟢 success
Fast test	Normally this is the first check that is ran for a PR. It builds ClickHouse and runs most of stateless functional tests, omitting some. If it fails, further checks are not started until it is fixed. Look at the report to see which tests fail, then reproduce the failure locally as described here	🟢 success
Flaky tests	Checks if new added or modified tests are flaky by running them repeatedly, in parallel, with more randomization. Functional tests are run 100 times with address sanitizer, and additional randomization of thread scheduling. Integrational tests are run up to 10 times. If at least once a new test has failed, or was too long, this check will be red. We don't allow flaky tests, read the doc	🟢 success
Install packages	Checks that the built packages are installable in a clear environment	🟢 success
Integration tests	The integration tests report. In parenthesis the package type is given, and in square brackets are the optional part/total tests	🟢 success
Mergeable Check	Checks if all other necessary checks are successful	🟢 success
Performance Comparison	Measure changes in query performance. The performance test report is described in detail here. In square brackets are the optional part/total tests	🟢 success
Push to Dockerhub	The check for building and pushing the CI related docker images to docker hub	🟢 success
SQLancer	Fuzzing tests that detect logical bugs with SQLancer tool	🟢 success
Sqllogic	Run clickhouse on the sqllogic test set against sqlite and checks that all statements are passed	🟢 success
Stateful tests	Runs stateful functional tests for ClickHouse binaries built in various configurations -- release, debug, with sanitizers, etc	🟢 success
Stateless tests	Runs stateless functional tests for ClickHouse binaries built in various configurations -- release, debug, with sanitizers, etc	🔴 failure
Stress test	Runs stateless functional tests concurrently from several clients to detect concurrency-related errors	🟢 success
Style Check	Runs a set of checks to keep the code style clean. If some of tests failed, see the related log from the report	🟢 success
Unit tests	Runs the unit tests for different release types	🟢 success
Upgrade check	Runs stress tests on server version from last release and then tries to upgrade it to the version from the PR. It checks if the new server can successfully startup without any errors, crashes or sanitizer asserts	🟢 success

[nikitamikhaylov]

@hendrik-m Let's check tests failures.

[hendrik-m]

Could you please update AST Fuzzer so it will replace table name identifiers with string literals sometimes?

I've checked and think this does not seem to be the right approach. In the AST the quotes are parsed and therefore gone. In order to fuzz quoting styles, the dump of the AST which happens here has to be extended to change the quoting style in FormatSettings at random. However the quoting style added for this PR only targets table names, so it gets a bit more complex:

• add a writeTableIdentifier method to FormatSettings
• add some indirection in ASTIdentifier::formatImplWithoutAlias so that ASTTableIdentifier calls writeTableIdentifier instead of writeIdentifier to write the table name
• add a TableIdentifierQuotingStyle struct and option in FormatSettings which defaults to the same value used for IdentifierQuotingStyle, but allows an explicit overwrite to StringLiteral
• extend formatForErrorMessage to optionally take FormatSettings (but disallow changing some of the essentials)
• finally let fuzzing choose different quoting styles at random

[alexey-milovidov]

Looks perfect :)

[alexey-milovidov]

JFYI, the reason why instead of clickhouse-local it was written as ./clickhouse local is as follows:

Our documentation engineers (all two of them) are using Mac.

In Mac, the ClickHouse installation script Install.cpp does not support creating symlinks and installing into /usr/bin/

But ClickHouse download script will put the clickhouse binary into the current directory, and it can be run without installation.

Although, I figured out, how to install ClickHouse on Mac here: https://github.com/ClickHouse/NoiSQL#quick-start---macos
we did not put it into the Install script because no one among the engineers is using Mac, so the development iterations for Mac installation can be long.

Your edit does not look right because it is unlikely that the symlink exists, but clickhouse is not installed in PATH.

[alexey-milovidov]

We have tryReadQuotedStringInto - we can avoid throwing and catching exceptions here.