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What is the difference between shallow copy and deep copy?

Anubhav Sharma 474 19 Jun 2025

What is the difference between shallow copy and deep copy?

c# c#
Updated 23 Jun 2025
Anubhav Sharma
Anubhav Sharma

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The Anubhav portal was launched in March 2015 at the behest of the Hon'ble Prime Minister for retiring government officials to leave a record of their experiences while in Govt service .

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1 Answers

Ponu Maurya
Ponu Maurya 23 Jun 2025
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In C#, shallow copy and deep copy refer to two different ways of copying an object, especially when it contains references to other objects (complex or nested structures).

Definitions

Type Description
Shallow Copy Copies the object and its immediate references, but not the objects those references point to. Both the original and the copy share the same referenced objects.
Deep Copy Copies the object and recursively copies all referenced objects, creating a completely independent duplicate.

Example

public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public Address Address { get; set; }
}

public class Address
{
    public string City { get; set; }
}

Shallow Copy:

Person p1 = new Person { Name = "Alice", Address = new Address { City = "London" } };
Person p2 = (Person)p1.MemberwiseClone(); // Shallow copy
  • p2.Name is a new string (value type in effect).
  • p2.Address is shared with p1 — changing p2.Address.City will also affect p1.

Deep Copy:

Person p1 = new Person { Name = "Alice", Address = new Address { City = "London" } };
Person p2 = new Person
{
    Name = p1.Name,
    Address = new Address { City = p1.Address.City } // New Address instance
};
  • p2 is fully independent of p1.
  • Modifying p2.Address.City will not affect p1.

Shallow Copy in .NET:

You can perform a shallow copy using:

object copy = this.MemberwiseClone();

This is protected and typically used within a class implementing ICloneable.

Deep Copy Techniques:

  • Manual Copy (as shown above)
  • Serialization (BinaryFormatter, JSON, etc.)
  • AutoMapper or libraries that support deep copying

Summary Table

Feature Shallow Copy Deep Copy
References copied? Yes No (references are recreated)
Memory Usage Low High (more object instances created)
Performance Fast Slower
Use Case When shared references are OK When full independence is needed

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