what is the use of clone method and also its types?

indhu mathy

13y1.2kVisual Basic .NET

what is use of clone method and its types

3 Replies

Know the answer? Post it — somebody with the same question will find it here.

Vulpes13y ago
If you clone an object, then you make a copy of it or, to be more precise, its fields.

There are two types of clones : shallow copies and deep copies.

In both cases, all value type fields are copied bit by bit.

However, with shallow copies, if a field is a reference type, the reference is copied but the object to which it refers is not. Consequently, the original object and its clone refer to the same object. This means that if you change the referred object then it will affect both the original object and its clone i.e. the two are not independent.

With deep copies, if a field is a reference type, the object to which it refers is copied from scratch. Consequently, the original object and its clone refer to different objects and so the two are completely independent.

The MemberwiseClone() method which all classes inherit from System.Object always produces a shallow copy.

Other Clone() methods (whether the class implements ICloneable or not) may produce either shallow or deep copies - you have to read the documentation to find out which one.
Jignesh Trivedi13y ago
Hi,
Clone() in C# is implemented by ICloneable interface.
The resulting clone must be of the same type as or a compatible type to the original instance.
with the help of Clone you can create a new object of the same type as the one you invoke it on, without knowing the exact type of the object you are invoking it on.
hope this will help you.
Satyapriya Nayak13y ago
Clone() method creates and returns a copy of string object. The CSharp string Clone() method returns a reference to this instance of string.

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace WindowsApplication1
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            {
                string str = "Clone() Test";
                string clonedString = null;
                clonedString = (String)str.Clone();
                MessageBox.Show (clonedString);
            }
        }
    }
}

Please refer the below links

http://csharp.net-informations.com/string/csharp-string-clone.htm
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/3441/Base-class-for-cloning-an-object-in-C

Thanks