I have a graph (network) which consists of layers, which contains nodes (neurons). I would like to write a procedure to duplicate entire graph in most elegant way possible -- i.e. with minimal or no overhead added to the structure of the node or layer.

Or yet in other words -- the procedure could be complex, but the complexity should not "leak" to structures. They should be no complex just because they are copyable.

I wrote the code in C#, so far it looks like this:

• neuron has additional field -- copy_of which is pointer the the neuron which base copied from, this is my additional overhead
• neuron has parameterless method Clone()
• neuron has method Reconnect() -- which exchanges connection from "source" neuron (parameter) to "target" neuron (parameter)
• layer has parameterless method Clone() -- it simply call Clone() for all neurons
• network has parameterless method Clone() -- it calls Clone() for every layer and then it iterates over all neurons and creates mappings neuron=>copy_of and then calls Reconnect to exchange all the "wiring"

I hope my approach is clear. The question is -- is there more elegant method, I particularly don't like keeping extra pointer in neuron class just in case of being copied! I would like to gather the data in one point (network's Clone) and then dispose it completely (Clone method cannot have an argument though).