Question

I might be approaching this the wrong way, but I’d like to have an object like this:

class MyDataStructure {
  def myClone = {
    val clone = new MyDataStructure
    // do stuff to make clone the same as this
    ...
    clone
  }
}

class MyDataStructureExtended(val foo: String) extends MyDataStructure

Then:

val data = MyDataStructureExtended
val dataClone = data.clone
println(dataClone.foo)

So, the problem is that dataClone is of type MyDataStructure, not MyDataStructureExtended as I’d hoped.

I thought about adding a type T to the super class, that the subclass can specify (e.g. itself), but that didn’t seem very promising.

Answer 1

Assuming you want to minimize amount of ceremony in the subclasses, here is my suggestion:

class A extends Cloneable {
  protected[this] def myCloneImpl[T] = {
    val justLikeMe = this.clone
    // copy values and such.
    // Note that the Object.clone method already made a shallow copy, but you may want
    // to deepen the copy or do other operations.
    justLikeMe.asInstanceOf[T]
  }
  def myClone = myCloneImpl[A]
}

class B extends A {
  override def myClone = myCloneImpl[B]
}

By extending java.lang.Cloneable and calling the Object.clone method, you ensure that your runtime type is the same as the object being cloned. The static type is coerced with a type-cast (asInstanceOf[T]). You will need to override the myClone method in each subclass and specify the type, but it should be a one-liner.