Dear List, thanks to Jeff Jenness, Chris Duncan, Chris Garrard and
Lorenzo Jorquera.

Original question:
Dear List, I haven't used clone before and would like some confirmation
as to what I think it is used for.  It is my understanding that clone
should be used when adding, or copying from one object (e.g.. an element
in a list) to
another or when deleting objects from tables, etc.  Is this correct?  I
am wondering if it is a
good practice to always clone a list and deal with the cloned list
instead of the
original.  Any thoughts, comments, or suggestions would be appreciated.
Pat

Summary:
To begin with "oops" on my part for not looking in the archives but here

is the summary.  All of the replies indicated the same thing:


Use clone when you want to make a copy of something to manipulate it.
The best example was if you have a theme and want to copy it into
another
view and then change the theme in the second view.  If you just copy it,
the
theme in the first view will be affected as well as the theme in the
second
view.  So use clone or deepclone to copy the theme and the original will
not be
effected.

Chris Duncan sent me to the archives where there is (I think) a pretty
good discussion of WHY clone/deep clone is important
http://lists.directionsmag.com/discussion
<http://lists.directionsmag.com/discussion/>  .