I have a hierarchy of nodes where the relevant part of the Node class looks like this:

public class Node 
{
    protected Node parent;
    protected List<Node> children;

    public Node Duplicate()
    {
        string json = JsonUtility.ToJson(this);
        Node duplicate = (Node)JsonUtility.FromJson(json, GetType());
        return duplicate;
    }
}

(I use Unity's JsonUtility to serialize to JSON and then deserialize it. Should be the same with System.Text.Json)

Now I want to create a duplicate of a Node with all of its children, and so I do this:

Node duplicate = someNode.Duplicate();

Did I just create a deep copy of the hierarchy, or is it just another way to make a shallow copy?

Is JSON serialization and deserialization suitable for duplicating hierarchies where I want all of the data to be intact?

CodePudding user response：

You've definitely created a deep copy. This approach has one benefit: It works correctly. It has one drawback: Horrible performance. If that's not an issue, its simplicity is alluring.

And performance might not be an issue! It depends on your scenario.