How does the Java clone method work?

Question

public class Student implements Cloneable {
    public Student clone() {
        Student clonedStudent = (Student) super.clone();
        return clonedStudent;
    }
}

Why does Java return student object instead of returning object class object. As we are using super. Does it mean Java itself provides shallow cloning in the clone method?

Answer 1

java cloning is field by field copy i.e. as the Object class does not have idea about the structure of class on which clone() method will be invoked.

1) If the class has only primitive data type members then a completely new copy of the object will be created and the reference to the new object copy will be returned.

2) If the class contains members of any class type then only the object references to those members are copied and hence the member references in both the original object as well as the cloned object refer to the same object.

Refer this link object cloning in java