On 1/16/2012 1:27 PM, albert kao wrote:
I want to clone the following class so is the following code ok?
public class TestImpl implements Serializable {
private int id = 0;
private java.sql.Timestamp createDateTime;
private java.sql.Date expiryDate;
private java.math.BigDecimal amount;
private java.sql.Timestamp deleteTimestamp;
// other methods
// ...
@Override
public Object clone() throws CloneNotSupportedException {
return (TestImpl)super.clone();
}
}
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/Object.html#clone%28%29
<quote>
By convention, the returned object should be obtained by calling super.clone.
If a class and all of its superclasses (except Object) obey this convention,
it will be the case that x.clone().getClass() == x.getClass().
By convention, the object returned by this method should be independent of
this object (which is being cloned). To achieve this independence, it may be
necessary to modify one or more fields of the object returned by super.clone
before returning it. Typically, this means copying any mutable objects that
comprise the internal "deep structure" of the object being cloned and
replacing the references to these objects with references to the copies. If a
class contains only primitive fields or references to immutable objects, then
it is usually the case that no fields in the object returned by super.clone
need to be modified.
The method clone for class Object performs a specific cloning operation.
First, if the class of this object does not implement the interface Cloneable,
then a CloneNotSupportedException is thrown. Note that all arrays are
considered to implement the interface Cloneable. Otherwise, this method
creates a new instance of the class of this object and initializes all its
fields with exactly the contents of the corresponding fields of this object,
as if by assignment; the contents of the fields are not themselves cloned.
Thus, this method performs a "shallow copy" of this object, not a "deep copy"
operation.
The class Object does not itself implement the interface Cloneable, so calling
the clone method on an object whose class is Object will result in throwing an
exception at run time.
</quote>
Note what it says about mutable objects.
Honi soit qui mal y pense.