• A creational design pattern in software development. The prototype pattern is used when the type of objects to create is determined by a prototypical instance, which is cloned to produce new objects. To implement the pattern, a client declares an abstract base class that specifies a pure virtual clone() method. Any class that needs a polymorphic constructor capability derives itself from the abstract base class, and implements clone(). The prototype design pattern is one of the 23 “Gang of Four” design patterns that describe how to solve recurring design problems to design flexible and reusable object-oriented software. ← Wikipedia

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