Module std::clone

The Clone trait for types that cannot be 'implicitly copied'.

In Rust, some simple types are "implicitly copyable" and when you assign them or pass them as arguments, the receiver will get a copy, leaving the original value in place. These types do not require allocation to copy and do not have finalizers (i.e. they do not contain owned boxes or implement Drop), so the compiler considers them cheap and safe to copy. For other types copies must be made explicitly, by convention implementing the Clone trait and calling the clone method.

Basic usage example:

let s = String::new(); // String type implements Clone
let copy = s.clone(); // so we can clone it

To easily implement the Clone trait, you can also use #[derive(Clone)]. Example:

#[derive(Clone)] // we add the Clone trait to Morpheus struct
struct Morpheus {
   blue_pill: f32,
   red_pill: i64,
}

fn main() {
   let f = Morpheus { blue_pill: 0.0, red_pill: 0 };
   let copy = f.clone(); // and now we can clone it!
}

Traits

Clone

A common trait for the ability to explicitly duplicate an object.