org.opengis.util.Cloneable Maven / Gradle / Ivy
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/*
* GeoTools - The Open Source Java GIS Toolkit
* http://geotools.org
*
* (C) 2011, Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo)
* (C) 2003-2005, Open Geospatial Consortium Inc.
*
* All Rights Reserved. http://www.opengis.org/legal/
*/
package org.opengis.util;
/**
* Indicates that it is legal to make a field-for-field copy of instances of implementing classes. A
* cloneable class implements the J2SE's {@link java.lang.Cloneable} standard interface and
* additionnaly overrides the {@link Object#clone()} method with public access.
*
* Because the {@link Object#clone()} method has protected access, containers wanting to clone
* theirs elements need to 1) use Java reflection (which is less efficient than standard method
* calls), or 2) cast every elements to a specific type like {@link java.util.Date} (which may
* require a large amount of "{@code if (x instanceof y)}" checks if arbitrary classes are allowed).
* This {@code Cloneable} interface had a third alternative: checks only for this interface instead
* of a list of particular cases.
*
*
Implementors of cloneable classes may consider implementing this interface, but this is not
* mandatory. A large amount of independant classes like {@link java.util.Date} will continue to
* ignore this interface, so no rule can be enforced anyway. However this interface may help the
* work of containers in some case. For example a container may checks for this interface first, and
* uses Java reflection as a fallback.
*
* @author Martin Desruisseaux (IRD)
* @since GeoAPI 1.0
* @see java.lang.Cloneable
* @see "Cloneable
* doesn't define clone()" on Sun's bug parade
*/
public interface Cloneable extends java.lang.Cloneable {
/**
* Creates and returns a copy of this object. The precise meaning of "copy" may depend on the
* class of the object.
*
* @return A copy of this object.
* @see Object#clone
*/
Object clone();
}