Shallow Copy

What is a Copy Constructor?

A copy constructor is a special constructor that creates a new object as a duplicate of an existing object of the same class, copying its field values into the…

What is the Prototype Pattern?

The Prototype pattern is a creational design pattern that creates new objects by cloning an existing, fully configured instance rather than constructing one fr…

What is a Shallow Copy?

A shallow copy creates a new object and copies the values of the original object’s fields into it, but for any field that is itself a reference to another obje…

Shallow Copy vs Deep Copy

A shallow copy duplicates an object’s top-level fields but keeps any reference-type fields pointing to the same underlying objects as the original, while a dee…

What is the clone() Method?

clone() is a protected method defined on Java’s Object class that creates and returns a field-by-field copy of the calling object, and a class must implement t…

What is Object Cloning?

Object cloning is the general technique of creating a new object that has the same state as an existing object, so the copy can be used or modified independent…

What is a Copy Assignment Operator?

A copy assignment operator is the special member function (in C++, operator=(const T&)) that defines how an already-existing object’s state is overwritten with…

Shallow Copy vs Deep Copy: What Is the Difference?

A shallow copy duplicates only the top-level properties of an object or array, so nested objects are still shared by reference with the original, while a deep…