https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119928

--- Comment #18 from Barry L. Kramer <[email protected]> ---
Previously, I didn't fully understand the ramifications of that comment.

I think this explains the issue clearly:

\n delimits the end of the data within a cell (for any copy/paste regardless of
how many cells are copied).
But if there are newlines within a cell, then it will be ambiguous as to
whether a \n in the output is within the data contained inside a cell, or if
the \n is indicating the end of the last cell in a row (during a multi-cell
copy/paste).

That is an interesting problem.

A solution could be to specify what is used to delimit a cell and let it be
different depending on whether the source cells contain \n characters and/or
whether it is single cell or multiple cell copy.  I will try to think about
this more.

Does anyone here know how this is handled by different software, such as Excel
or Open Office?  I don't have these to compare.


Just to compare, Google Sheets handles it like this (I delimited each paste
>located between angle brackets<):
Using the file
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12pAOUOJn0SPNx8RsiOs95zWV4IgzenNQELjH-HzvK-A/edit?usp=sharing

For a single cell not containing a newline:
>line 1<

For 3 cells, none containing a newline:
>line 1
line 2
line 3<

For one cell containing a newline:

>"line A
line B"<

For 3 cells, two containing a newline:

>"line A
line B"
line C
"line D
line E
line F"<

So any cell with a newline is quoted, and tab or \n marks end of any cell.

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