From: Matt Armstrong <matt@...>
Date: 2002-12-17T06:51:13+09:00
Subject: Re: Deep copy in Rub?

christopher.j.meisenzahl@citicorp.com writes:

> I remember when using C++ for the first time and running into the
> shallow/deep copy problem. "I copied my object, freed something in
> obj_b, but it's also gone in obj_a, what gives!?!"  :-)

In addition to the other answers, there are two methods to copy an
object in Ruby.  Object.dup and Object.clone.

I'm not sure why -- they don't do anything different in the standard
classes.  The Pickaxe book says they might do something different in
derived classes, but stops short of suggesting a practice (e.g. clone
does deep copy and dup does shallow copy).