From: Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs@...>
Date: 2000-06-19T17:13:40+01:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:03520] Re: Deep copy?

On Tue, 20 Jun 2000, GOTO Kentaro wrote:

> In message "[ruby-talk:03516] Deep copy?"
>     on 00/06/19, Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs@dmu.ac.uk> writes:
> >Given that I cannot overload =, how should I go about ensuring a deep
> >copy of an object, as opposed to a shallow copy?
> 
> I think there isn't general way. The meaning of deep copy depends on
> target object, so we have define such method for each class. 

OK.  I can live with that I suppose.
> 
> Marshal.dump is another option, but not perfect. 
> 
>   class Object
>     def deep_copy
>       Marshal.load(Marshal.dump(self))
>     end
>   end
> 
> Maybe, deep copy is not suitable operation for an object. 

The only case I can think of is a self referencing object, but
that is a special case for other things (like garbage collection?) too.
> 
> -- gotoken
> 
> 
	Hugh