NAME

Clone - recursively copy Perl datatypes

SYNOPSIS

    use Clone 'clone';    my $data = {       set => [ 1 .. 50 ],       foo => {           answer => 42,           object => SomeObject->new,       },    };    my $cloned_data = clone($data);    $cloned_data->{foo}{answer} = 1;    print $cloned_data->{foo}{answer};  # '1'    print $data->{foo}{answer};         # '42'

You can also add it to your class:

    package Foo;    use parent 'Clone';    sub new { bless {}, shift }    package main;    my $obj = Foo->new;    my $copy = $obj->clone;

DESCRIPTION

This module provides a "clone()" method which makes recursive copies of nested hash, array, scalar and reference types, including tied variables and objects.

"clone()" takes a scalar argument and duplicates it. To duplicate lists, arrays or hashes, pass them in by reference, e.g.

    my $copy = clone (\@array);    # or    my %copy = %{ clone (\%hash) };

SEE ALSO

Storable's "dclone()" is a flexible solution for cloning variables, albeit slower for average-sized data structures. Simple and naive benchmarks show that Clone is faster for data structures with 3 or fewer levels, while "dclone()" can be faster for structures 4 or more levels deep.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2001-2022 Ray Finch. All Rights Reserved.

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR

Ray Finch "<[email protected]>"

Breno G. de Oliveira "<[email protected]>", Nicolas Rochelemagne "<[email protected]>" and Florian Ragwitz "<[email protected]>" perform routine maintenance releases since 2012.