DeepClone

The standard clone method creates a fresh instance of most (non-scalar) objects but does not clone internal state. This internal state remains aliased in the cloned copy. The full_clone method digs deep and makes copies of these internal variables, not just arrays and hashes. It also allows classes to specify an exclusion list of variables that are not to be processed.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'full_clone'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install full_clone

Usage

require 'full_clone'

then, in those places where regular clone was problematic, use:

foo = my_object.full_clone

instead of

foo = my_object.clone

To exclude some instance variables from the deep cloning process, define a full_clone_exclude method in the required class:

def full_clone_exclude
  [:@bad_var1, :@bad_var2, :@bad_var_etc]
end

Contributing

  1. Fork it
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
  5. Create new Pull Request