Discovering Classes and Objects - Beginning Java 7 - page 118

Note Chapter 6 introduces you to the java.util.Objects class, which
provides several null-safe or null-tolerant class methods for comparing two objects,
computingthehashcodeofanobject,requiringthatareferencenotbenull,andreturn-
ing a string representation of an object.

Cloning
The clone() method clones (duplicates) an object without calling a constructor. It
copies each primitive or reference field's value to its counterpart in the clone, a task
known as shallow copying or shallow cloning . Listing 2-25 demonstrates this behavior.

Listing 2-25. Shallowly cloning an Employee object

class Employee implements Cloneable
{

String name;
int age;
Employee(String name, int age)
{

this.name = name;
this.age = age;

}
public static void main(String[] args) throws

CloneNotSupportedException
{

Employee e1 = new Employee("John Doe", 46);
Employee e2 = (Employee) e1.clone();
System.out.println(e1 == e2); // Output: false
System.out.println(e1.name == e2.name); // Output:

true
}

}

Listing 2-25 declares an Employee class with name and age instance fields, and
aconstructorforinitializingthesefields.The main() methodusesthisconstructorto
initialize a new Employee object's copies of these fields to John Doe and 46 .