Is there any reason to prefer System.arraycopy() over clone()?

Question

When copying an entire array, I\'ve often seen people write:

int[] dest = new int[orig.length];
System.arraycopy(orig, 0, dest, 0, orig.length);

Answer 1

Just guessing here, but there might be a good reason to use System.arraycopy because different JVM's could conceivably implement them in a way that takes advantage of native abilities of the underlying system for a performance boost.

For example, a JVM implementation could use a native library call like memcpy which could potentially take advantage of some memory controller tricks to perform the action in some incredibly fast and clever way. However, the Object.clone implementation might not be a good candidate for such optimization due to its virtual nature.