A class implements the
Cloneable
interface to
indicate to the
Object.clone()
method that it
is legal for that method to make a
field-for-field copy of instances of that class.
Invoking Object's clone method on an instance that does not implement the
Cloneable
interface results in the exception
CloneNotSupportedException
being thrown.
By convention, classes that implement this interface should override
Object.clone (which is protected) with a public method.
See Object.clone()
for details on overriding this
method.
Note that this interface does not contain the clone method.
Therefore, it is not possible to clone an object merely by virtue of the
fact that it implements this interface. Even if the clone method is invoked
reflectively, there is no guarantee that it will succeed.