Creating a copy of an object in C#

Question

Please have a look at the code below (excerpt from a C# book):

public class MyClass 
{
    public int val;
}
public struct myStruct 
{
    public int val;
}
public class Program 
{
    private static void Main(string[] args) 
    {
        MyClass objectA = new MyClass();
        MyClass objectB = objectA;

        objectA.val = 10;
        objectB.val = 20;

        myStruct structA = new myStruct();
        myStruct structB = structA;

        structA.val = 30;
        structB.val = 40;

        Console.WriteLine("objectA.val = {0}", objectA.val);
        Console.WriteLine("objectB.val = {0}", objectB.val);
        Console.WriteLine("structA.val = {0}", structA.val);
        Console.WriteLine("structB.val = {0}", structB.val);

        Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

I understands it produces the output below:

objectA.val = 20
objectB.val = 20
structA.val = 30
structB.val = 40

The last two lines of the output I have no problem with, but the first two tell me that objectA and objectB are pointing to the same memory block (since in C#, objects are reference types).

The question is how do make objectB, a copy of objectA so that it points to a different area in memory. I understand that trying to assign their members may not work since those members may be references, too. So how do I go about making objectB a completely different entity from objectA?

Answer 1

You could do:

class myClass : ICloneable
{
    public String test;
    public object Clone()
    {
        return this.MemberwiseClone();
    }
}

then you can do

myClass a = new myClass();
myClass b = (myClass)a.Clone();

N.B. MemberwiseClone() Creates a shallow copy of the current System.Object.

Answer 2

There is no built-in way. You can have MyClass implement the IClonable interface (but it is sort of deprecated) or just write your own Copy/Clone method. In either case you will have to write some code.

For big objects you could consider Serialization + Deserialization (through a MemoryStream), just to reuse existing code.

Whatever the method, think carefully about what "a copy" means exactly. How deep should it go, are there Id fields to be excepted etc.

Answer 3

The easiest way to do this is writing a copy constructor in the MyClass class.

Something like this:

namespace Example
{
    class MyClass
    {
        public int val;

        public MyClass()
        {
        }

        public MyClass(MyClass other)
        {
            val = other.val;
        }
    }
}

The second constructor simply accepts a parameter of his own type (the one you want to copy) and creates a new object assigned with the same value

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        MyClass objectA = new MyClass();
        MyClass objectB = new MyClass(objectA);
        objectA.val = 10;
        objectB.val = 20;
        Console.WriteLine("objectA.val = {0}", objectA.val);
        Console.WriteLine("objectB.val = {0}", objectB.val);
        Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

output:

objectA.val = 10

objectB.val = 20               

Answer 4

There's already a question about this, you could perhaps read it

Deep cloning objects

There's no Clone() method as it exists in Java for example, but you could include a copy constructor in your clases, that's another good approach.

class A
{
  private int attr

  public int Attr
  {
     get { return attr; }
     set { attr = value }
  }

  public A()
  {
  }

  public A(A p)
  {
     this.attr = p.Attr;
  }  
}

This would be an example, copying the member 'Attr' when building the new object.