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 less levels, while "dclone()" can be faster for structures 4 or more levels deep.

COPYRIGHT¶

Copyright 2001-2014 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 "<rdf@cpan.org>" Breno G. de Oliveira "<garu@cpan.org>" and Florian Ragwitz "<rafl@debian.org>" perform routine maintenance releases since 2012.