`COPY TO <file> [FIELDS <list>] [FOR ...] [WHILE ...] [NEXT ...]
[RECORD ...] [REST] [ALL]` reaches the parser as a plain function
call to a new RTL primitive __dbCopy (rtlDbCopy in hbrtl/database.go).
Implementation: project the field list (case-insensitive name match
against the source's structure, full copy when omitted), dbCreate the
target file with that struct, open it under a temp alias, walk the
source under dbEval-style FOR/WHILE/NEXT/RECORD/REST bounds, and
GetValue/Append/PutValue per record into the target. SDF / DELIMITED
variants stay parser no-ops until those backends arrive.
Wiring up COPY surfaced four longstanding gaps in the PP that had to
be fixed for the rule to even reach the runtime:
* `<(name)>` *pattern* marker was treated as a regular `<name>`
with the parens baked into the captured key, so the matching
result substitution `<(name)>` couldn't find it. parseOneMarker
now strips the parens at parse time so capture key and result
marker share the bare name. The smart-stringify result behavior
is unchanged.
* matchSegment (the optional-clause matcher) bailed on every
non-Regular marker. `[FIELDS <fields,...>]` therefore failed to
match at all and the fields list arrived empty in the result
template. matchSegment now handles MarkerList with paren-balanced
capture and segment+outer literal stop boundaries.
* captureExpression only used the first literal in the pattern
tail as a stop boundary. With std.ch's chain of optional
clauses (`[TO <(f)>] [FIELDS ...] [FOR ...] [WHILE ...] ...`)
the file-name marker was happy to gobble a trailing FOR clause
when FIELDS was absent. It now stops at *any* of the remaining
pattern literals.
* `<(name)>` smart-stringify on a list-typed capture wrapped the
whole comma-joined string in one set of quotes — `{ "a , b" }` —
instead of `{ "a", "b" }`. New helper quoteListElements splits on
top-level commas (paren / bracket / brace / string-balanced) and
quotes each element. applyResult now consults the rule's marker
table to know which captures came from `<name,...>`.
Parser cleanup: COPY removed from the IDENT-statement no-op switch in
both parseIdentStmt and parseExprStmt.
Gates green:
go test ./... : PASS
FiveSql2 SQL:1999 : 43/43
Harbour compat : 56/56
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>