How to deep copy an irregular 2D array

Question

How can I deep copy an irregularly shaped 2D array in Java?

Ie.

int[][] nums =  {{5},
                 {9,4},
                 {1,7,8},
                      


        

Answer 1

Some folks suggest clone() -- just to be extra clear, clone() on a multi-dimensional array is only a shallow clone. original.clone()[0] == original[0]. But (for primitives) you can use clone() instead of System.arraycopy() once you're down to one-dimensional arrays.