ArrayCollection.addItem( not just a reference! )

Question

What I'm trying to do is something like
ArrayUtilities.duplicate(object), but using the ArrayCollection.
Also, I haven't been able to find ArrayUtilities.duplicate (it was
referenced in the O'Reily book on AS3).
I have an object of a custom class, and I want to make an
array of them where I can change the original object and not have
it change the array.
For Example:
import controls.Source; //Source is a custom class I created
in the controls dir/folder
[Bindable] public var source:Source;
source.field1="something"; //where field1 is defined as a
String in the Source class
[Bindable] public var destination:ArrayCollection = new
ArrayCollection();
public function addSourceToDestination():void
destination.addItem(source);
source.field1="anything else";
Alert.show(source.field1);
Alert.show(destination[0].field1);
// will show two alert boxes that both say 'anything else'
How do I fix this? I need to save the contents of a form into
an array, then be able to clear the form for re-population and
not have those changes reflected until I add the object to the
next position in the array.
I'll address modifying the contents of the Array later on,
that shouldn't be as difficult.
Can someone
PLEASE help me? I've been pulling my hair out for 3 days,
now I'm running out of hair.
*/

Answer 1

I may be missunderstanding how you ment to implement that,
but I changed my Source class to extend ArrayCollection then after
getting rid of the compiler errors (overloading where not
permitted) I couldn't get it to .clone(). I also tried extending
ArrayCollection in my main class (the code snippet from above is in
a custom class that implements another custom class) and that
didn't work either.
I'm not sure that extending ArrayCollection is the right way
to go. I don't need to add an Array to an Array, I need to add an
Object to an Array by value, not reference. I know that the problem
is with the way AS3 handles composite data types. It makes sense
from a memory saving side, but it does limit functionality in
certain instances. What I need a workaround, as I'm sure there is.
I need
ArrayCollectionVariable[n] =(set by value)= ObjectVariable;
then I
clear the values in ObjectVariable add new values to it,
then add those
new values to ArrayCollectionVariable[n+1] and so on, so
that ArrayCollectionVariable[x] would be a snapshot of what
ObjectVariable would've been when it was added (via a fancy
function stored in a class that this all will take place
in).