Are you familiar with the copy module in Python and have you used it in your projects?

The copy module in Python is used for creating copies of objects. It provides two main functions:

• copy.copy() — shallow copy, which creates a new object but nested objects remain references to the original.
• copy.deepcopy() — deep copy, which recursively copies all nested objects, creating a completely independent copy.

I used the copy module in tests when I needed to create independent data instances for verification without affecting the original objects. For example:

import copy

original = {'a': [1, 2, 3], 'b': 4}
shallow = copy.copy(original)
deep = copy.deepcopy(original)

shallow['a'].append(4)
print(original['a'])  # Outputs [1, 2, 3, 4], since the list is shared

deep['a'].append(5)
print(original['a'])  # Outputs [1, 2, 3], original remains unchanged

This helps avoid side effects during testing.