Duplicating Object with Clone

Posted Date: 03 Nov 2004	Resource Type: Articles	Category: .NET Framework
Author: Custom Software	Member Level: Bronze
Rating:	Points: 5

Introduction
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' Just added to show the difference between shallow and deep cloning
_
Class SampleRefType
Public Val As Integer
End Class

_
Class Employee

Public m_Name As String
Public m_age As Int16
Public someObject As SampleRefType

' Do shallow cloning
Function ShallowClone() As Employee
Return CType(Me.MemberwiseClone(), Employee)
End Function

' This is one way to do deep cloning. But works only if the
' objects and its references are serializable
Function DeepClone() As Employee
Dim m As New MemoryStream()
Dim b As New BinaryFormatter()
b.Serialize(m, Me)
m.Position = 0
Return b.Deserialize(m)
End Function

Sub Print()
Console.WriteLine("Name : " & m_Name)
Console.WriteLine("Age : " & m_age)
Console.WriteLine("Some Value: " & someObject.Val)
End Sub

End Class

Module MainModule

Sub Main()
Dim objRef As New SampleRefType()
objRef.Val = 1000

Dim objA As New Employee()
objA.m_Name = "customsoftware"
objA.m_age = 23
objA.someObject = objRef

Dim objB As Employee = objA.DeepClone
Dim objC As Employee = objA.ShallowClone

'objB is a deep clone. So chages made to objRef would not affect objB's value.
'But objC is shallow cloned. So, if the objRef is changed, so is the value in
'ObjC. So objC should print 2000 whereas objB should print 1000
objRef.Val = 2000

'Updating some state
objC.m_age = 100
'objB.m_Name = "New Name"
objA.m_Name = "aaa"

Console.WriteLine("Original Object:")
objA.Print()
Console.WriteLine()
Console.WriteLine("Shallow Cloned Object:")
objC.Print()
Console.WriteLine()
Console.WriteLine("Deep Cloned Object:")
objB.Print()
Console.ReadLine()

End Sub

End Module
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Summary
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