What I would like to do is to define a copy constructor which takes A as an argument and it initializes the new A to be a deep copy of argument A
public class A<E extends Comparable<? super E>> implements B<E>
{
private A a;
private E[] hArray;
// What I tried .... my copy constructor
public A(A other)
{
this.a = other; // deep copy
}
}
Is this the right way of doing deep copy through copy constructor??
That's not a deep copy. You are just storing the reference to the other object.
Try this:
public A(A other) {
if(other.a != null) {
this.a = new A(other.a);
}
if(other.hArray != null) {
this.hArray = new E[other.hArray.length];
for(int index = 0; index < other.hArray.length; index++) {
this.hArray[index] = other.hArray[index].clone();
}
}
}
This assumes that E also has a copy constructor that performs a deep copy. Plus I just noticed that E is a generic, so my code might not work correctly for that (but the idea is there).
E implements Cloneable if possible... then you could just go this.hArray[index] = other.hArray[index].clone(); - but of course that doesn't guarantee a deep copy...
clone(), you could use that to initially copy hArray.
You can't just assign if you want a deep copy - that's not what deep copy means. You'd need to go:
public A(A other)
{
if(other != null) {
this.a = new A(other.a); // deep copy
} else {
this.a = null;
}
}
That's recursive copying, and you could wind up with all kinds of infinite loops, though. Also, you'd need to deep copy E somehow, and those generics are kind of boggling my mind, so I won't try to speculate on how you might do that.
