Copying and Comparing: Problems and Solutions

In object oriented programming, it is sometimes necessary to copy objects and to compare them for equality or inequality. We discuss some of the issues involved in copying and comparing objects and we address the problem of generating appropriate copying and comparing operations automatically, a service that is not provided by most object oriented languages and environments. Automatic generation appears to be not only desirable, because hand-coding these methods is mechanical and yet error-prone, but also feasible, because the form of the code is simple and largely predictable. Some languages and some object models presented in the literature do support generic copying and comparing, typically defining separate “shallow” and “deep” versions of both operations. A close examination of these definitions reveals inadequacies. If the objects involved are simple, copying and comparing them is straightforward. However, there are at least three areas in which insufficient attention h...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: ECOOP
• Authors: Peter Grogono, Markku Sakkinen
• Keywords: Copying, ECOOP 2000, Object Oriented, Object Oriented Programming, Programming Languages