Cloneable and Immutable

[Tom Hawtin]

Max (Weijun) Wang wrote:

> I'm refactoring an existing Cloneable class to make it immutable. It 
> seems I can simply remove the clone() method and let Object.clone() take 
> care it. Also, if it's a final class, is it better to simply return this?

If it isn't in a public API, I'd suggest avoiding Cloneable and clone 
always.

If it's a public API with an immutable interface but currently a 
stateful implementation that you want to make stateless, then whilst 
calling Object.clone would work, it's still yucky IMO. (I can't think of 
a good example of this, although you could imagine the notorious 
java.text.DateFormat without the mutators.)

Tom