Interface Cloneable

This interface should be implemented by classes wishing to support of override Object.clone(). The default behaviour of clone() performs a shallow copy, but subclasses often change this to perform a deep copy. Therefore, it is a good idea to document how deep your clone will go. If clone() is called on an object which does not implement this interface, a CloneNotSupportedException will be thrown.

This interface is simply a tagging interface; it carries no requirements on methods to implement. However, it is typical for a Cloneable class to implement at least equals, hashCode, and clone, sometimes increasing the accessibility of clone to be public. The typical implementation of clone invokes super.clone() rather than a constructor, but this is not a requirement.

If an object that implement Cloneable should not be cloned, simply override the clone method to throw a CloneNotSupportedException.

All array types implement Cloneable, and have a public clone method that will never fail with a CloneNotSupportedException.

Since: 1.0

See Also: clone CloneNotSupportedException

UNKNOWN: updated to 1.4