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The resulting object is called an object copy or simply copy of the original object. Copying is basic but has subtleties and can have significant overhead. There are several ways to copy an object, most commonly by a copy constructor or cloning. Copying is done mostly so the copy can be modified or moved, or the current value preserved.
Define a Prototype object that returns a copy of itself. Create new objects by copying a Prototype object. This enables configuration of a class with different Prototype objects, which are copied to create new objects, and even more, Prototype objects can be added and removed at run-time. See also the UML class and sequence diagram below.
(In the JavaScript language, one can do this by using a null prototype, i.e. Object.create(null).) Cloning refers to a process whereby a new object is constructed by copying the behavior of an existing object (its prototype). The new object then carries all the qualities of the original. From this point on, the new object can be modified.
In Java, the Object class contains the clone() method, which copies the object and returns a reference to that copied object. Since it is in the Object class, all classes defined in Java will have a clone method available to the programmer (although to function correctly it needs to be overridden at each level it is used). Cloning an object in ...
Once the unreachable set has been determined, the garbage collector may simply release the unreachable objects and leave everything else as it is, or it may copy some or all of the reachable objects into a new area of memory, updating all references to those objects as needed. These are called "non-moving" and "moving" (or, alternatively, "non ...
Copy-on-write (COW), also called implicit sharing [1] or shadowing, [2] is a resource-management technique [3] used in programming to manage shared data efficiently. Instead of copying data right away when multiple programs use it, the same data is shared between programs until one tries to modify it.
Using this technique, when a user asks the system to copy an object, it instead merely creates a new reference that still points to the same object. As soon as a user attempts to modify the object through a particular reference, the system makes a real copy, applies the modification to that, and sets the reference to refer to the new copy.
In class-based, object-oriented programming, an instance variable is a variable defined in a class (i.e., a member variable), for which each instantiated object of the class has a separate copy, or instance. [1] [2] An instance variable has similarities with a class variable, [3] but is non-static.