What is the difference between shallow and deep cloning in programming?

What is the difference between shallow and deep cloning in programming?

Shallow cloning creates a new object but copies references to the original object's elements. Deep cloning copies all elements recursively.

Can you give me an example of shallow cloning?

Sure! In JavaScript, using Object.assign() creates a shallow clone. If the original object has nested objects, the nested ones are still referenced.

And how would deep cloning work?

Deep cloning can be done using methods like JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(obj)) in JavaScript, which creates a completely independent copy.

Are there any performance differences between the two?

Yes, shallow cloning is generally faster since it only copies references, while deep cloning is slower due to the need to copy all nested objects.