Re: Why can't I copy a collection class from one instance to another?

if this is common to classes in other
programming environments.

Yes, it is common to true object programming environments. You often have to
still write a clone method, but the properties and methods of the object
*usually* can be un-corked out to a serialized string that can be saved (in
fact, we call this serialization). It is this "string" of data that can
then be loaded back into the object.

This gives two benefits.

you can actually "save" the state of the object to your hard disk..and
next time you run the program...re-load the object. Thus, you can actually
use objects, and save them to a database, or even a file on hard disk.

The side benefit of this serialization process is that the code to clone
a object his thus very easy to write....

And, even more important, with web based services...you can *transfer* a
object across the connection this way.

So, if the language at hand does not support clone of the object (not all
do), but does support what we call serialization, then cloning is easy
anyway...

We have neither clone, nor serialization available in VB, or ms-access,
which by the way is the same as VB6...

You do have serialization in vb.net however.....


--
Albert D. Kallal (Access MVP)
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
pleaseNOOSpamKallal@xxxxxxx
http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal


.

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