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   this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
   The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
   (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
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       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

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package org.apache.poi.common;

/**
 * This is an alternative to the {@link Cloneable} interface without its side-effects.
 * A class implementing Duplicatable provides a deep-copy of itself - usually this is done via a copy-constructor,
 * which is invoked with a self-reference by the copy method.
 * References to child objects are duplicated - references to parents are kept as-is and
 * might need to be replaced by the parent copy operation.
 *
 * @param  the implementing class itself
 *
 * @see Copy Constructor versus Cloning
 */
public interface Duplicatable {
    // Providing a generics interface Duplicatable> pushes too many
    // changes to the implementing classes and the benefit of providing a subtype-specific copy method
    // is not sufficient
    /**
     * @return a deep copy of the implementing class / instance
     */
    Duplicatable copy();
}




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