Cloning in Java

Question

I read one paragraph from the Internet regarding cloning. But I didn\'t quite get it, so can someone explain it clearly?

If the class has final fields, th

Answer 1

Not that I recommend it but one can use sun.misc.Unsafe to overwrite a value of a final field. It is highly not recommended to use this class but this post is not about that (). A sample code to overwrite a value of a final field:

    public class FinalClone
    implements Cloneable {
private final FinalClone finalField;

public FinalClone(FinalClone finalField) {
    this.finalField = finalField;
}

@Override
protected FinalClone clone()
        throws CloneNotSupportedException {

    final FinalClone result = (FinalClone) super.clone();

    if (finalField == null) {
        return result; // no need to clone null
    }

    final Field unsafeField;
    try {
        unsafeField = Unsafe.class.getDeclaredField("theUnsafe");
    }
    catch (NoSuchFieldException e) {
        throw new AssertionError(e);
    }
    unsafeField.setAccessible(true);
    final Unsafe unsafe;
    try {
        unsafe = (Unsafe) unsafeField.get(null);
    }
    catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
        throw new SecurityException(e);
    }

    // Update final field
    try {
        unsafe.putObjectVolatile(
                result,
                unsafe.objectFieldOffset(
                        FinalClone.class.getDeclaredField("finalField")),
                finalField.clone());
    }
    catch (NoSuchFieldException e) {
        throw new AssertionError(e);
    }

    return result;
}
}