Skip to main content

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

4
  • "should not be the caller's concern". I could not agree more but, here I am, trying to figure out if List<T> aList=new List<T>(aFullListOfT) will do a deep copy(which is what I want) or a shallow Copy(which would break my code) and whether I have to implement another way to get the job done! Commented Oct 22, 2013 at 7:42
  • 3
    A list<T> is too generic (ha ha) for clone to even make sense. In your case, that is certainly only a copy of the list and NOT the objects pointed to by the list. Manipulating the new list won't affect the first list, but the objects are the same and unless they are immutable, they ones in the first set will change if you change the ones in the second set. If there were a list.Clone() operation in your library, you should expect the result to be a full clone as in "won't change when I do something to the first one." that applies to the contained objects as well. Commented Jan 13, 2014 at 23:00
  • 1
    A List<T> isn't going to know anything more about properly cloning it's contents than you are. If the underlying object is immutable, you are good to go. Otherwise, if the underlying object has a Clone() method you will have to use it. List<T> aList = new List<T>(aFullListOfT.Select(t=t.Clone()) Commented Jan 13, 2014 at 23:06
  • 1
    +1 for the hybrid approach. Both approaches have an advantage and disadvantage, but this seems to have the more overall benefit. Commented Jun 26, 2014 at 8:29