PHP Object Assignment vs Cloning

Question

I know this is covered in the php docs but I got confused with this issue .

From the php docs :

$instance = new SimpleClass();
$assigned   =  $ins         


        

Answer 1

It just makes a completely new object, which retains the properties of the object being copied. It performs a deep copy:

$assigned = $instance; 

It makes a shallow copy when you copy an object from one to another:

$assigned = clone $instance;