Copying the contents of a base class from a derived class

Question

I currently have a derived class and a base class. How can I make the base class of the derived class equal to a base class that I have? Will a shallow copy work?

Answer 1

You will have to manually copy the fields of the Base instance to the new Derived instance.

A common way of doing this is by offering a copy constructor:

public Derived(Base other)
{
    if (other == null) {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("other");
    }

    this.name = other.name;
    this.address = other.address;
}

---

One more note about your code:

private string field; 
public string Field { get; set; }

This does not make much sense (same for the other properties).

public string Field { get; set; } means that a private field will automatically be created by the compiler. Your field field will never be used at all.

Either just write public string Field { get; set; }, as the private field will be created automatically. Or declare the Field property in a way so that your private field will be used:

private string field;

public string Field {
    get {
        return field;
    }
    set {
        field = value;
    }
}