Cloning Interview questions
1) What are different types of cloning in Java?
Java supports two type of cloning: - i) Deep cloning
ii) shallow cloning.
By default shallow copy is used in Java. Object class has a method clone() which
does shallow cloning.
2) What is Shallow copy?
In shallow copy the object is copied without its contained objects.
Shallow clone only copies the top level structure of the object not the lower levels.
It is an exact bit copy of all the attributes.
Original
Figure 1: Original java object obj
The shallow copy is done for obj and new object obj1 is created but
contained objects of obj are not copied.
Shallow Copy
Figure 2: Shallow copy object obj1
It can be seen that no new objects are created for obj1 and it is referring to
the same old contained objects. If either of the containedObj contain any
other object no new reference is created
3) What is deep copy and how it can be acheived?
In deep copy the object is copied along with the objects it refers to. Deep clone copies
all the levels of the object from top to the bottom recursively.
Original
Figure 3 : Original Object obj
When a deep copy of the object is done new references are created.
Deep Copy
Figure 4: obj2 is deep copy of obj1
One solution is to simply implement your own custom method
(e.g., deepCopy()) that returns a deep copy of an instance of one of your
classes. This may be the best solution if you need a complex mixture of deep
and shallow copies for different fields, but has a few significant drawbacks:
* You must be able to modify the class (i.e., have the source code)
or implement a subclass. If you have a third-party class for which
you do not have the source and which is marked final, you are out of luck.
* You must be able to access all of the fields of the class’s superclasses.
If significant parts of the object’s state are contained in private fields
of a superclass, you will not be able to access them.
* You must have a way to make copies of instances of all of the other kinds
of objects that the object references. This is particularly problematic if the
exact classes of referenced objects cannot be known until runtime.
* Custom deep copy methods are tedious to implement, easy to get wrong,
and difficult to maintain. The method must be revisited any time a change
is made to the class or to any of its superclasses.
Other common solution to the deep copy problem is to use Java Object Serialization
(JOS). The idea is simple: Write the object to an array using JOS’s ObjectOutputStream
and then use ObjectInputStream to reconsistute a copy of the object. The result will be a
completely distinct object, with completely distinct referenced objects. JOS takes care of all
of the details: superclass fields, following object graphs, and handling repeated references to
the same object within the graph.
* It will only work when the object being copied, as well as all of the other
objects references directly or indirectly by the object, are serializable. (In other
words, they must implement [Link].) Fortunately it is often sufficient to
simply declare that a given class implements [Link] and let Java’s
default serialization mechanisms do their thing. Java Object Serialization is slow, and
using it to make a deep copy requires both serializing and deserializing.
There are ways to speed it up (e.g., by pre-computing serial version ids and defining
custom readObject() and writeObject() methods), but this will usually be the primary
bottleneck. The byte array stream implementations included in the [Link] package are
designed to be general enough to perform reasonable well for data of different sizes and to be
safe to use in a multi-threaded environment. These characteristics, however, slow down
ByteArrayOutputStream and (to a lesser extent) ByteArrayInputStream .
4) What is difference between deep and shallow cloning?
The differences are as follows:
Consider the class:
public class MyData{
String id;
Map myData;
}
The shallow copying of this object will have new id object and values as “” but will
point to the myData of the original object. So a change in myData by either original or cloned
object will be reflected in other also. But in deep copying there will be new id object and also
new myData object and independent of original object but with same values.
Shallow copying is default cloning in Java which can be achieved using clone() method of
Object class. For deep copying some extra logic need to be provided.
5) What are the characteristics of a shallow clone?
If we do a = clone(b)
1) Then [Link](a)
2) No method of a can modify the value of b.
6) What are the disadvantages of deep cloning?
Disadvantages of using Serialization to achieve deep cloning –
* Serialization is more expensive than using [Link]().
* Not all objects are serializable.
* Serialization is not simple to implement for deep cloned object..