Assignment statements in Python do not copy objects, they create bindings between a target and an object. For collections that are mutable or contain mutable items, a copy is sometimes needed so one can change one copy without changing the other. This module provides generic shallow and deep copy operations (explained below).
Interface summary:
copy.copy(x)
Return a shallow copy of x.
copy.deepcopy(x)
Return a deep copy of x.
exception copy.error
Raised for module specific errors.
The difference between shallow and deep copying is only relevant for compound objects (objects that contain other objects, like lists or class instances):
Two problems often exist with deep copy operations that don’t exist with shallow copy operations:
The deepcopy()
function avoids these problems by:
This module does not copy types like module, method, stack trace, stack frame, file, socket, window, array, or any similar types. It does “copy” functions and classes (shallow and deeply), by returning the original object unchanged; this is compatible with the way these are treated by the pickle
module.
Shallow copies of dictionaries can be made using dict.copy()
, and of lists by assigning a slice of the entire list, for example, copied_list = original_list[:]
.
Changed in version 2.5: Added copying functions.
Classes can use the same interfaces to control copying that they use to control pickling. See the description of module pickle
for information on these methods. The copy
module does not use the copy_reg
registration module.
In order for a class to define its own copy implementation, it can define special methods __copy__()
and __deepcopy__()
. The former is called to implement the shallow copy operation; no additional arguments are passed. The latter is called to implement the deep copy operation; it is passed one argument, the memo dictionary. If the __deepcopy__()
implementation needs to make a deep copy of a component, it should call the deepcopy()
function with the component as first argument and the memo dictionary as second argument.
See also
Module
pickle
Discussion of the special methods used to support object state retrieval and restoration.
© 2001–2020 Python Software Foundation
Licensed under the PSF License.
https://docs.python.org/2.7/library/copy.html