Cloning

• 2 types of clones of an object
  • Shallow copy: Partial duplicate of an object
  • Deep copy: Complete duplicate of object.
• Shallow copy
  • The clone’s primitive fields are new variables given the same value as in original Object.
  • But the clone’s Object fields are references to the same object in the original field.
    • All shallow copies and the original object are linked through their object fields. They’re always the same.
  • Changes made to clone’s object fields are mirrored in the original (and all clones).
• Object.clone() in Java is a shallow copy
• Deep copy:
  • Object fields are entirely new objects.
  • Changes made to a cloned object’s object fields are not mirrored in the original.