What 's difference between copy and clone?

[hugemx830202]

Hi,

From the UVM class reference manual, copy is deep copy, and clone is exact copy, so what does 'exact' copy mean? I guess clone is also deep copy, but the difference with copy(), is that clone() is virtual method, but copy() is not, need your confirm, thanks.

BR

MEIXIAO

[Roman]

Hi MEIXIAO,

The UVM clone method is used to provide a deep copy of an object. We can call clone() on any object, and it will use the clone() method of its actual class, without the calling code needing to know what that class is.

Clone first allocates new memory for the object, then copies over each field to the new object. If a field is an object handle, then instead of copying the handle (which would do a "Shallow" copy) you would call fieldname.clone() to recursively allocate memory for that field (a "Deep" copy).

[dave_59]

clone() means construct followed by a call to copy(). clone() is virtual so that you can construct the same object type as the one you started with. clone() calls copy() to perform a deep copy of the object type you just created. The copy() method by itself just copies class member values from one object to another. Normally, the copy() method only copies the class members for the current class type, then it calls super.copy() to copy the class members of the base class.

[nicolbiden]

An object copy is a process where a data object has its attributes copied to another object of the same data type. In .Net Shallow copy and deep copy are used for copying data between objects. More about.......Shallow copy and deep copy

 

Biden