001/* Cloneable.java -- Interface for marking objects cloneable by Object.clone() 002 Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 003 004This file is part of GNU Classpath. 005 006GNU Classpath is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify 007it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by 008the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) 009any later version. 010 011GNU Classpath is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but 012WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 013MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU 014General Public License for more details. 015 016You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License 017along with GNU Classpath; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the 018Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 01902110-1301 USA. 020 021Linking this library statically or dynamically with other modules is 022making a combined work based on this library. Thus, the terms and 023conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the whole 024combination. 025 026As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you 027permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an 028executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent 029modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under 030terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked 031independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that 032module. An independent module is a module which is not derived from 033or based on this library. If you modify this library, you may extend 034this exception to your version of the library, but you are not 035obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this 036exception statement from your version. */ 037 038 039package java.lang; 040 041/** 042 * This interface should be implemented by classes wishing to 043 * support of override <code>Object.clone()</code>. The default 044 * behaviour of <code>clone()</code> performs a shallow copy, but 045 * subclasses often change this to perform a deep copy. Therefore, 046 * it is a good idea to document how deep your clone will go. 047 * If <code>clone()</code> is called on an object which does not 048 * implement this interface, a <code>CloneNotSupportedException</code> 049 * will be thrown. 050 * 051 * <p>This interface is simply a tagging interface; it carries no 052 * requirements on methods to implement. However, it is typical for 053 * a Cloneable class to implement at least <code>equals</code>, 054 * <code>hashCode</code>, and <code>clone</code>, sometimes 055 * increasing the accessibility of clone to be public. The typical 056 * implementation of <code>clone</code> invokes <code>super.clone()</code> 057 * rather than a constructor, but this is not a requirement. 058 * 059 * <p>If an object that implement Cloneable should not be cloned, 060 * simply override the <code>clone</code> method to throw a 061 * <code>CloneNotSupportedException</code>. 062 * 063 * <p>All array types implement Cloneable, and have a public 064 * <code>clone</code> method that will never fail with a 065 * <code>CloneNotSupportedException</code>. 066 * 067 * @author Paul Fisher 068 * @author Eric Blake (ebb9@email.byu.edu) 069 * @author Warren Levy (warrenl@cygnus.com) 070 * @see Object#clone() 071 * @see CloneNotSupportedException 072 * @since 1.0 073 * @status updated to 1.4 074 */ 075public interface Cloneable 076{ 077 // Tagging interface only. 078}