Talk:deep copy

Hmm . . . what makes an antonym an antonym. Prototypical antonym pairs: "high/low" "up/down" "hot/cold" are completely opposite, at least in the given senses. The situation here is a little different. Shallow and deep copies are both variants on the theme of copying. "Shallow" and "deep" are antonyms, but I'm not sure that "shallow copy" and "deep copy" should be. What about "white bear" and "black bear"?

Fair question. If adjective A means "not B" and "not A" means b, then are A and B antonyms? Examples: on/off - a switch is either on or off, so "on" means "not off" and "not on" means "off". In other words, if the pair of adjectives describe a binary relationship (ie, one whether only one of the states is possible, and if one is not present, then the other one must be), then are they antonyms? This would rule out "white bear" and "black bear" because there are also brown bears, but would make "deep copy" and "shallow copy" antonyms, because if you make a copy that is not a deep copy, it is a shallow copy.

That is only true, however, if this is a valid definition of "antonym". I would say that it is probably not really valid, and would tend to agree, on balance, that deep copy/shallow copy should not be described as antonyms. I'll revert these changes. -- Paul G 14:28, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I tend to think "antonym" does not generally apply to compounds. Stricly speaking, the opposite of "A and B" is "not A and not B." So the opposite of "white bear" would be "anti-white anti-bear". "anti-white" has a pretty well-defined value of "black," but "anti-bear" doesn't have a well defined meaning. This is the usual case for such phrases: Adjectives often have antonyms, but nouns seldom do. I'm hard-pressed to think of a case where a compound can be sensibly reversed in both parts, and the reversal means approximately the opposite of the original.

Anyway, thanks for reverting the changes. -dmh 15:58, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)