How to make a copy of an object in C

Question

Let s say that I have a class   class obj     int a    int b      and then I have this code   obj myobj   new obj    a 1  b 2  obj myobj2   myobj    Now the above code makes a reference to the first obj  What I want is that myobj2 refers to a copy of the myobj with changes not being reflected in the original  I have searched SO and the solutions thus far seems complicated  Is there an easier way to do this  I am using  net 4 5

User · Answer

You can use MemberwiseClone  obj myobj2    obj myobj MemberwiseClone      The copy is a shallow copy which means the reference properties in the clone are pointing to the same values as the original object but that shouldn t be an issue in your case as the properties in obj are of value types   If you own the source code  you can also implement ICloneable

User · Answer

Properties in your object are value types and you can use the shallow copy in such situation like that   obj myobj2    obj myobj MemberwiseClone      But in other situations  like if any members are reference types  then you need Deep Copy  You can get a deep copy  of an object using Serialization and Deserialization techniques with the help of BinaryFormatter class   public static T DeepCopy lt T gt  T other        using  MemoryStream ms   new MemoryStream                  BinaryFormatter formatter   new BinaryFormatter            formatter Context   new StreamingContext StreamingContextStates Clone           formatter Serialize ms  other           ms Position   0          return  T formatter Deserialize ms             The purpose of setting StreamingContext  We can introduce special serialization and deserialization logic to our code with the help of either implementing ISerializable interface or using built-in attributes like OnDeserialized  OnDeserializing  OnSerializing  OnSerialized  In all cases StreamingContext will be passed as an argument to the methods and to the special constructor in case of ISerializable interface   With setting ContextState to Clone  we are just giving hint to that method about the purpose of the serialization   Additional Info   you can also read this article from MSDN   Shallow copying is creating a new object and then copying the nonstatic fields of the current object to the new object  If a field is a value type  a bit-by-bit copy of the field is performed  for a reference type  the reference is copied but the referred object is not  therefore the original object and its clone refer to the same object   Deep copy is creating a new object and then copying the nonstatic fields of the current object to the new object  If a field is a value type  a bit-by-bit copy of the field is performed  If a field is a reference type  a new copy of the referred object is performed

[c#] How to make a copy of an object in C#

Examples related to c#

Examples related to .net

Examples related to clone