Object Operations

Some of the most basic operations in programming become more complicated when you're dealing with complex data structures and objects. For example, when you want to copy or compare primitive data types, the process is quite straightforward. However, copying and comparing objects is not quite as simple. On page 34 of his book Effective C++ , Scott Meyers devotes an entire section to copying and assigning objects.

Classes and References

The problem with complex data structures and objects is that they might contain references. Simply making a copy of the reference does not copy the data structures or the object that it references. In the same vein, when comparing objects, simply comparing a pointer to another pointer only compares the references ”not what they point to.

The problems arise when comparisons and copies are performed on objects. Specifically, the question boils down to whether you follow the pointers or not. For example, there should be a way to copy an object. Again, this is not as simple as it might seem. Because objects can contain references, these reference trees must be followed to do a valid copy (if you truly want to do a deep copy).

Deep Versus Shallow Copies

A deep copy is when all the references are followed and new copies are created for all referenced objects. There might be many levels involved in a deep copy. For objects with references to many objects, which in turn might have references to even more objects, the copy itself can create significant overhead. A shallow copy would simply copy the reference and not follow the levels. Gilbert and McCarty have a good discussion about what shallow and deep hierarchies are on page 265 of Object-Oriented Design in Java in a section called "Prefer a Tree to a Forest."

To illustrate , in Figure 3.8, if you just do a simple copy of the object (called a bitwise copy ), any object that the primary object references will not be copied ”only the references will be copied. Thus, both objects (the original and the copy) will point to the same objects. To perform a complete copy, in which all reference objects are copied , you have to write the code to create all the sub-objects.

Figure 3.8. Following object references.

This problem also manifests itself when comparing objects. As with the copy function, this is not as simple as it might seem. Because objects contain references, these reference trees must be followed to do a valid comparison of objects. In most cases, languages provide a default mechanism to compare objects. As is usually the case, do not count on the default mechanism. When designing a class, you should consider providing a comparison function in your class that you know will behave as you want it to.