Coding practise for initialising ArrayLists

addAll adds references to the objects in the ArrayList, not copies from objects. Id you want copies, you must iterate through the 1st ArrayList, and for every Object, call the "clone" function that will create a copy of the object, and add it to the new ArrayList.

Example:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    ArrayList<Foo> A = new ArrayList<Foo>();
    A.add(new Foo("foo1", 1));
    A.add(new Foo("foo2", 2));
    ArrayList<Foo> B = new ArrayList<Foo>();
    System.out.println("Before: ");
    System.out.println("A:");
    for(Foo foo:A){
        System.out.println(foo);
        try {
            B.add((Foo)foo.clone());
        } catch (CloneNotSupportedException ex) {
            //Never Gonna Happen
        }
    }
    System.out.println("B:");
    for(Foo foo:B){
        System.out.println(foo);
    }

    A.remove(0);

    System.out.println("After:");
    System.out.println("A:");
    for(Foo foo:A){
        System.out.println(foo);
    }
    System.out.println("B:");
    for(Foo foo:B){
        System.out.println(foo);
    }
}

public static class Foo{
    private String Name;
    private int Id;

    public Foo(String Name, int Id) {
        this.Name = Name;
        this.Id = Id;
    }

    @Override
    protected Object clone() throws CloneNotSupportedException {
        return new Foo(Name,Id);
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "Name: "+Name+", Id: "+Id;
    }
}

This prints out:

Before: 
A:
Name: foo1, Id: 1
Name: foo2, Id: 2
B:
Name: foo1, Id: 1
Name: foo2, Id: 2
After:
A:
Name: foo2, Id: 2
B:
Name: foo1, Id: 1
Name: foo2, Id: 2

If you deal with ArrayLists of classes you created, make sure they all have "clone" function overridden. For classes containing classes you also created, use the "clone" functions you created for the inner classes in the parent class "clone". And so on.