I have a generic list of objects in C#, and wish to clone the list. The items within the list are cloneable, but there doesn't seem to be an option to do list.Clone()
.
Is there an easy way around this?
If your elements are value types, then you can just do:
List<YourType> newList = new List<YourType>(oldList);
However, if they are reference types and you want a deep copy (assuming your elements properly implement ICloneable
), you could do something like this:
List<ICloneable> oldList = new List<ICloneable>();
List<ICloneable> newList = new List<ICloneable>(oldList.Count);
oldList.ForEach((item) =>
{
newList.Add((ICloneable)item.Clone());
});
Obviously, replace ICloneable
in the above generics and cast with whatever your element type is that implements ICloneable
.
If your element type doesn't support ICloneable
but does have a copy-constructor, you could do this instead:
List<YourType> oldList = new List<YourType>();
List<YourType> newList = new List<YourType>(oldList.Count);
oldList.ForEach((item)=>
{
newList.Add(new YourType(item));
});
Personally, I would avoid ICloneable
because of the need to guarantee a deep copy of all members. Instead, I'd suggest the copy-constructor or a factory method like YourType.CopyFrom(YourType itemToCopy)
that returns a new instance of YourType
.
Any of these options could be wrapped by a method (extension or otherwise).