Copying classes with pointers

[divad12]

How would I make a deep copy of an object which has properties that are pointers? If I just use the copy operator (=), the pointers would still point to the same memory location.

Essentially I have a class which contains instances of the Node class. The Node class looks something like this:

code:

class Node { public:     vector <Node*>  next;     vector <Node*>  prev;     /* ... */ };

and the class which contains it looks something like this:

code:

class Circuit { public:     vector <Node> gates;     /* ... */ };

I wish to copy an instance of the Circuit class, but without having Circuit::gates all point to the same node locations as the original object. Is there a way to do this in C++?

Thanks.

[md]

Overwrite the copy operator and make copies of the data pointed to in your overloaded operator.

Something like

c++:

class Circuit { public...  Circuit& operator=(const Circuit& to_copy) { ... return *this; } private: ... };

[divad12]

I would have to make new copies of the Node objects, but they contain pointers to each other. If I make new Node objects, they would still point to their older copies. How would I make them point to new copies? Should I use a recursive function? Do I have to completely reconstruct the Circuit?

[md]

You would have to duplicate the node list, yes. How you do that is entirely up to you.

[OneOffDriveByPoster]

If am not too sure (especially since the code is not complete), but it looks like you are keeping pointers to things in a vector and I do not think that is safe. Unless if I am mistaken, there is no guarantee that the address of the vector elements will remain the same when you modify the vector.