package Clone; use strict; our $AUTOLOAD; require Exporter; require AutoLoader; use XSLoader (); our @ISA = qw(Exporter); our @EXPORT; our @EXPORT_OK = qw( clone ); our $VERSION = '0.46'; XSLoader::load('Clone', $VERSION); 1; __END__ =head1 NAME Clone - recursively copy Perl datatypes =for html Build Status Coverage Status CPAN version =head1 SYNOPSIS use Clone 'clone'; my $data = { set => [ 1 .. 50 ], foo => { answer => 42, object => SomeObject->new, }, }; my $cloned_data = clone($data); $cloned_data->{foo}{answer} = 1; print $cloned_data->{foo}{answer}; # '1' print $data->{foo}{answer}; # '42' You can also add it to your class: package Foo; use parent 'Clone'; sub new { bless {}, shift } package main; my $obj = Foo->new; my $copy = $obj->clone; =head1 DESCRIPTION This module provides a C method which makes recursive copies of nested hash, array, scalar and reference types, including tied variables and objects. C takes a scalar argument and duplicates it. To duplicate lists, arrays or hashes, pass them in by reference, e.g. my $copy = clone (\@array); # or my %copy = %{ clone (\%hash) }; =head1 SEE ALSO L's C is a flexible solution for cloning variables, albeit slower for average-sized data structures. Simple and naive benchmarks show that Clone is faster for data structures with 3 or fewer levels, while C can be faster for structures 4 or more levels deep. =head1 COPYRIGHT Copyright 2001-2022 Ray Finch. All Rights Reserved. This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. =head1 AUTHOR Ray Finch C<< >> Breno G. de Oliveira C<< >>, Nicolas Rochelemagne C<< >> and Florian Ragwitz C<< >> perform routine maintenance releases since 2012. =cut