Confusion about cloneable interface and object.clone() in java

Question

If I have:

class foo implements Cloneable

and then do:

bar = new foo();
bar.clone();

I get a shallow cop

Answer 1

Object.clone() has an implementation:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/Object.html#clone()

This link explains the Cloneable interface: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/Cloneable.html

An object must implement the Cloneable interface in order to call the clone() method, otherwise, it throws a CloneNotSupportedException.

By definition, all classes in Java extend the base Object class, and Object class has a default clone() method, even though Object itself does not implement Cloneable. The Object class's clone() method will be called if you do not override it yourself.