Cloneable type parameter?

From:
"Stefan Schmiedl" <s@xss.de>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Sun, 13 Aug 2006 21:41:22 +0200
Message-ID:
<ebnv92$lhf$00$1@news.t-online.com>
Greetings.

I'd like to define a wrapper class, whose instances keep read-only
copies of the original object passed in. I tried using generics for this:

public class RestorableObject<T> {

  private T original;
  private T workingCopy;

  public RestorableObject(T obj) {
    original = obj;
    workingCopy = obj.clone(); // clone() is protected in Object
  }

}

After RTFM on how generics actually work, the error message is explainable:
T is unbounded, so the compiler sees me calling a protected method outside
of its class.

So here is my next attempt:

public class RestorableObject<T extends Cloneable> {

  private T original;
  private T workingCopy;

  public RestorableObject(T obj) {
    original = obj;
    workingCopy = obj.clone(); // clone() not found in Cloneable
  }

}

I should have seen this coming, since Cloneable is an empty interface,
and the docs state that

 * By _convention_, classes that implement this interface should override
 * Object.clone (which is protected) with a public method.

I guess nobody told javac about this _convention_ ... must be human thing.

I would like to make the compiler ensure that RestorableObject is
only wrapped around objects providing a clone() method. I can do
this by introducing an interface

public interface ReallyCloneable<T> {
  public T clone();
}

and finally arriving at

public class RestorableObject<T extends ReallyCloneable<T>> {

  private T original;
  private T current;

  public RestorableObject(T obj) {
    original = obj;
    current = obj.clone();
  }

}

Is there a more elegant way of doing this?

Regards,
Stefan

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