clone() vs copy constructor vs factory method?

Basically, clone is broken. Nothing will work with generics easily. If you have something like this (shortened to get the point across):

public class SomeClass<T extends Copyable> {


    public T copy(T object) {
        return (T) object.copy();
    }
}

interface Copyable {
    Copyable copy();
}

Then with a compiler warning you can get the job done. Because generics are erased at runtime, something that does a copy is going to have a compiler warning generating cast in it. It is not avoidable in this case.. It is avoidable in some cases (thanks, kb304) but not in all. Consider the case where you have to support a subclass or an unknown class implementing the interface (such as you were iterating through a collection of copyables that didn’t necessarily generate the same class).