Is it possible to make an object “Read Only” to a method

Question

If an object reference is passed to a method, is it possible to make the object \"Read Only\" to the method?

Answer 1

You could achieve a similar thing in most cases by cloning the Object as the first statement of the method, such as this...

public void readOnlyMethod(Object test){
    test = test.clone();
    // other code here
}

So if you called readOnlyMethod() and pass in any Object, a clone of the Object will be taken. The clone uses the same name as the parameter of the method, so there's no risk of accidentally changing the original Object.