jpmikkers / Baksteen.Extensions.DeepCopy

C# extension method for fast object cloning. This is a speed-optimized forked version of Alexy Burtsev's deep copier.

C# extension method for fast object cloning.

This is a speed-optimized fork of Alexey Burtsev's deep copier. Depending on your usecase, this will be 2x - 3x faster than the original. It also fixes some bugs which are present in the original code. Compared to the classic binary serialization/deserialization deep clone technique, this version is about seven times faster (the more arrays your objects contain, the bigger the speedup factor).

The speedup is achieved via the following techniques:

• object reflection results are cached
• don't deep copy primitives or immutable structs & classes (e.g. enum and string)
• to improve locality of reference, process the 'fast' dimensions or multidimensional arrays in the inner loops
• use a compiled lamba expression to call MemberwiseClone

How to use:

Use NuGet package manager to add the package Baksteen.Extensions.DeepCopy to your project. Then:

using Baksteen.Extensions.DeepCopy;
...
var myobject = new SomeClass();
...
var myclone = myobject.DeepCopy()!;    // creates a new deep copy of the original object 

Note: the exclamation mark (null-forgiving operator) is only required if you enabled nullable reference types in your project

Contributors:

• Alexey Burtsev (original deep copy code)
• Wouter Groeneveld (unit tests & XElement copy)
• Gitkarst (treat enum as immutable)
• Jean-Paul Mikkers (speed optimization)