There are two methods that you can use to copy objects in Python, namely, copy() and deepcopy().
They are similar and can be confusing for a lot of people. There is however a subtle difference.
Here is the explanation from the docs:
-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.
Maybe, an even more comprehensive description can be found here:
-A shallow copy means constructing a new collection object and then populating it with >-references to the child objects found in the original. In essence, a shallow copy is >-only one level deep. The copying process does not recurse and therefore won’t create >-copies of the child objects themselves. -A deep copy makes the copying process recursive. It means first constructing a new >-collection object and then recursively populating it with copies of the child objects >-found in the original. Copying an object this way walks the whole object tree to >-create a fully independent clone of the original object and all of its children.
Here is an example of the copy():
first_list = [[1, 2, 3], ['a', 'b', 'c']]
second_list = first_list.copy()
first_list[0][2] = 831
print(first_list) # [[1, 2, 831], ['a', 'b', 'c']]
print(second_list) # [[1, 2, 831], ['a', 'b', 'c']]
Here is an example of the deepcopy() case:
import copy first_list = [[1, 2, 3], ['a', 'b', 'c']] second_list = copy.deepcopy(first_list) first_list[0][2] = 831 print(first_list) # [[1, 2, 831], ['a', 'b', 'c']] print(second_list) # [[1, 2, 3], ['a', 'b', 'c']]
That’s pretty much it.
I hope you find this useful.
