Prototype Pattern

If the cost of creating a new object is large and creation is resource intensive, we clone the object to avoid creation.

Clone is usually a shallow copy wherein the original and the cloned object referring to the same copy of the referenced lower-level object. But we can implement clone method to be a deep copy. In a deep copy, the original top-level object and all of its primitive members are duplicated, any lower-level objects that the top-level object contains are also duplicated so the original and the cloned object refer to two different lower-level objects

// shallow
class X implements Cloneable {
public Object clone() {
    try {        //shallow copy
            return super.clone();
      } catch (CloneNotSupportedException e) {
            return null;
      }
}
 
// deep
class X implements Cloneable {
    B b;    //reference to another object
    int i;    //primitive members
    public Object clone() {
        X x= new X(i , b);        //Deep copy of B
        return x;
    }
    public X (int i , B bb) {
        b = new B(bb);//this is a simple example. B can be created in any other way
    }
}