clone methods violate clone's contract #25

Most (all?) clone methods are not properly written. Consider the following
example:

public class MyHTMLIndexerKit extends HTMLIndexerKit {}

(new MyHTMLIndexKit().clone() instanceof MyHTMLIndexerKit) == false

If I override the clone method (correctly by calling super):

public class MyHTMLIndexerKit extends HTMLIndexerKit {
public void clone() throws CloneNotSupportedException {
//causes a ClassCastException
MyHTMLIndexKit clone = null;

try

{ clone = (MyHTMLIndexerKit) super.clone(); }

catch (CloneNotSupportedException neverThrown)

{ //does nothing }

return clone;
}
}

Since clone is not properly implemented by HTMLIndexerKit, I can never properly
implement in a subclass.

So far, of all of the clone methods that I have inspected, none of them are
correctly implemented. They simply are returning a new instance of the class.

Environment

Operating System: All
Platform: All

Affected Versions

[current]