Thomas,

Why do you need a copy of the parameter object? You should be able to just keep passing the same one around. If you go copying and forking different versions of the parameter object around to different methods/functions I'd think it'd get hard to know what version of the parameter object is at any point. If the parameter object is not being written to by the destinations then there isn't much reason to not just use the one instance.

It's not that hard to write a clone/serialize/deserialize method in a class hierarchy provided that shallow copy is all you need.

>There is one area I'ld like to have a native clone-method or function: if I have to use standadized parameter objects. A simple "shallow copy" functionality like you described with amembers() should be enough there - the deep copy functionality (cloning of referenced objects) should not be needed.
>
>But if you ever had the "pleasure" of having to write inside a framework having a "halfgod"-like parameter object (and yes, they had god objects as well <g>) as part of the interface you'ld probably feel the need as well.