Kotlin data class copy method not deep copying all

问题:

Could someone explain how exactly the copy method for Kotlin data classes work? It seems like for some members, a (deep) copy is not actually created and the references are still to the original.

fun test() {
    val bar = Bar(0)
    val foo = Foo(5, bar, mutableListOf(1, 2, 3))
    println("foo    : $foo")

    val barCopy = bar.copy()
    val fooCopy = foo.copy()
    foo.a = 10
    bar.x = 2
    foo.list.add(4)

    println("foo    : $foo")
    println("fooCopy: $fooCopy")
    println("barCopy: $barCopy")
}

data class Foo(var a: Int,
               val bar: Bar,
               val list: MutableList<Int> = mutableListOf())

data class Bar(var x: Int = 0)

Output:
foo : Foo(a=5, bar=Bar(x=0), list=[1, 2, 3])
foo : Foo(a=10, bar=Bar(x=2), list=[1, 2, 3, 4])
fooCopy: Foo(a=5, bar=Bar(x=2), list=[1, 2, 3, 4])
barCopy: Bar(x=0)

Why is barCopy.x=0 (expected), but fooCopy.bar.x=2 (I would think it would be 0). Since Bar is also a data class, I would expect foo.bar to also be a copy when foo.copy() is executed.

To deep copy all members, I can do something like this:

val fooCopy = foo.copy(bar = foo.bar.copy(), list = foo.list.toMutableList())

fooCopy: Foo(a=5, bar=Bar(x=0), list=[1, 2, 3])

But am I missing something or is there a better way to do this without needing to specify that these members need to force a deep copy?

回答1:

The copy method of Kotlin is not supposed to be a deep copy at all. As explained in the reference doc (https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/data-classes.html), for a class such as:

data class User(val name: String = "", val age: Int = 0)

the copy implementation would be:

fun copy(name: String = this.name, age: Int = this.age) = User(name, age)

So as you can see, it's a shallow copy. The implementations of copy in your specific cases would be:

fun copy(a: Int = this.a, bar: Bar = this.bar, list: MutableList<Int> = this.list) = Foo(a, bar, list)

fun copy(x: Int = this.x) = Bar(x)

回答2:

As @Ekeko said, the default copy() function implemented for data class is a shallow copy which looks like this:

fun copy(a: Int = this.a, bar: Bar = this.bar, list: MutableList<Int> = this.list)

To perform a deep copy, you have to override the copy() function.

fun copy(a: Int = this.a, bar: Bar = this.bar.copy(), list: MutableList<Int> = this.list.toList()) = Foo(a, bar, list)

回答3:

There is a way to make a deep copy of an object in Kotlin (and Java): serialize it to memory and then deserialize it back to a new object. This will only work if all the data contained in the object are either primitives or implement the Serializable interface

Here is an explanation with sample Kotlin code https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Deepcopy#Kotlin

Note: This solution should also be applicable in Android using the Parcelable interface instead of the Serializable. Parcelable is more efficient.