From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2001-12-19T23:46:30+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:28912] Re: clone objects

In article <hobt1ukirrqekeo8dr130c7jmu72ngpqu6@4ax.com>,
Le Wang  <le.wang@sun.com> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>This has been discussed in other threads, but I still need one
>concrete example of how one would clone an object's private fields
>without exposing them (in other words, make them public)
>
>class A
>  def initialize (anArray)
>    @array = anArray
>  end
>end
>
>How would I 'deep copy' this without making a public accessor to
>array?
>
>Thanks
>-lw

try:

 class Object
   def deep_clone
     Marshal::load(Marshal.dump(self))
   end
 end

 instanceOfA = A.new(['a','b','c'])

 anotherA = instanceOfA.deep_clone

Phil