Question

I know that there is a clone() method in Object class which is declared as protected, so that means I can call clone() in my own class since every class inherits from Object class, for example :

public class CloneTest
{
    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        Employee employee1 = new Employee(...);
        Employee employee2 = employee1.clone(); // but here has 2 errors
    }
}

class Employee
{
    ...
}

first error is something about “access protected in Object”
second error is “incompatible type”
Why these errors happen ?

Answer 1

The clone method returns an Object if not overridden. So you must cast the result :

Employee employee2 = (Employee) employee1.clone();

The first error is related to the content of the Employee class, that we don’t see. Does it override the clone method ? It should, that’s the condition to have it accessible from other classes that the called class.