What is shallow copy and deep copy in C?
Similarly, what is shallow copy and deep copy?
A shallow copy constructs a new compound object and then (to the extent possible) inserts references into it to the objects found in the original. A deep copy constructs a new compound object and then, recursively, inserts copies into it of the objects found in the original.
Similarly, you may ask, what is shallow copy and deep copy in IOS?
Copies of objects can be shallow or deep. A deep copy duplicates the objects referenced while a shallow copy duplicates only the references to those objects. So if object A is shallow-copied to object B, object B refers to the same instance variable (or property) that object A refers to.
A memcpy() operation is an example of a shallow copy. Because memcpy() does not respect object semantics, it will not invoke the copy constructor of an object. Therefore, you should never use memcpy() to copy objects. Use it only when copying POD (Plain Old Data) types: ints, floating point numbers, and dumb structs.