Question

Suppose I’ve an Employee class with below definition:

class Employee {
   private final String id;
   private final String name;
   private final String dept;
   private final Address address;

   public Employee(String id, String name, String dept, Address address) {
    this.id = id;
    this.name = name;
    this.dept = dept;
    this.address = address;
   }

  public String getId() {
    return id; 
  }

  public String getName() {
    return name; 
  }

  public String getDept() {
    return dept; 
  }

  public Address getAddress() {
    return address; 
  }
}

class Address {
  private String addrLine1;
  private String addrLine2;
  ...
}

In above code, is Employee really immutable given that Address object can be changed with setters? If not, should we clone() Employee to return original Employee?…

Answer 1

You need to clone() the mutable object which is Address. cloning Employee won’t help.