cairo by example

clone and copy

Because of Cairo’s ownership rules, it’s necessary to specify how data can be duplicated. For this the Clone and Copy traits are used. Clone specifies how a type instance can be cloned, meaning its data duplicated and assigned a new owner. The behaviour specified by Clone can be arbitrarily complicated. Instead Copy requires Clone and it specifies that a type can be bitwise-copied, meaning that its cloning mechanism is simple and known, instead of arbitrary.

From the ownership example:

use array::ArrayTrait;
use clone::Clone;
use array::ArrayTCloneImpl;

fn foo(arr: Array<u128>) {
    // foo takes ownership of the array.
    // when this function returns, arr is dropped.
}

fn main() {
    // as the creator of arr, the main function owns the array
    let arr = ArrayTrait::<u128>::new();

    foo(arr.clone()); // moves ownership of a clone of arr to function call

    foo(arr); // compiles because previously the array was duplicated
    
    // foo(arr); <- fails to compile, as main doesn't own the array anymore
}

Try it out running cairo-run --single-file clone_copy.cairo --available-gas 20000 in your terminal.

An example of deriving the Copy trait:

use clone::Clone;

#[derive(Copy, Clone, Drop)]
struct Vector2 {
    x: u32,
    y: u32,
}
// u32 derives Copy too

fn main() {
    let v = Vector2 { x: 1, y: 0 };
    let w = v;

    // now w is a copy of v, v is still accesible
}

Run the example with cairo-run --single-file clone_copy_2.cairo --available-gas 20000 in your terminal.


Try it out!
  1. Install the toolchain:
    • For macOS and Linux, run our script:
      • curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lambdaclass/cairo-by-example/main/build/installer.sh | bash -s 2.2.0
    • For Windows and others, please see the official guide
  2. Run the example:
    1. Copy the example into a clone_and_copy.cairo file and run with:
      2. %!s(<nil>) clone_and_copy.cairo

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