Are there any alternatives to implementing Clone in Java?

Question

In my Java project, I have a vector of various types of Traders. These different types of traders are subclasses of the Trader class. Right now, I have a method that takes a

Answer 1

One option: If you can make the objects serializable, you can serialize then deserialize it to make a copy, similar to what happens when passing an object over RMI.

Quick copy method:

public MyObject copy() {
    ObjectOutputStream oos = null;
    ObjectInputStream ois = null;
    try {
        ByteArrayOutputStream bos =  new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        oos = new ObjectOutputStream(bos);
        oos.writeObject(this);
        oos.flush();
        ByteArrayInputStream bin =
            new ByteArrayInputStream(bos.toByteArray());
        ois = new ObjectInputStream(bin);
        return (MyObject)ois.readObject();
    } catch(Exception e) {
        return null;
    } finally {
        try {
            oos.close();
            ois.close();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            return null;
        }
    }
}