[ingeniousclown]

This already exists as a global function implemented by ZO:

function ZO_DeepTableCopy(source, dest)
    dest = dest or {}
    
    for k, v in pairs(source) do
        if type(v) == "table" then
            dest[k] = ZO_DeepTableCopy(v)
        else
            dest[k] = v
        end
    end
    
    return dest
end

This excludes metatables, however, and at a glance, it looks like it will crash on any circular reference.