Why JSONObject.put(...) copies the value?

[user17]

Hi,

My project uses the original org.json code developed by Douglas Crockford. We are looking at json-lib as a possible replacement.

We have hundreds places in the code where do something like this:

    JSONObject result= new JSONObject();
    JSONObject part1 = new JSONObject();
    JSONObject part2 = new JSONObject();
    ...

    // add empty parts to the parent
    parent.put( "part1", part1 );
    parent.put( "part2", part2 );

    // fill in the parts
    ...

    return result;

This code broke after we switched from org.json to json-lib. The reason: json-lib version of JSONObject.put(...) adds a *copy* of the value, not the reference to the value, like org.json did.

A couple of questions:

1. Is there an easy way to change the behavior of put(...) call, so it stores a reference rather than a copy?

2. json-lib was derived from org.json.  What was the reason to change the put(...) behavior?

Thanks,
user17

[user17]

Sorry, the code snippet in my original post isn't quite right.  Here's the correct version.

---------------------------------------------------------
JSONObject result= new JSONObject();

JSONObject part1 = new JSONObject();
JSONObject part2 = new JSONObject();

// add empty parts to the result
result.put( "part1", part1 );
result.put( "part2", part2 );

// fill in the parts
...

return result;
---------------------------------------------------------