Creating and manipulating environment within function

Hi

I am trying to create a set of functions to create and manipulate objects within a dedicated environment, which I was hoping to put directly under the global environment. However, my implementation (see code below) is facing some scoping issues: the environment created by one function does not appear to be accessible from outside the function.

What would be the proper way to create a manipulation an environment in different functions?

Thanks

```
create_e1 <- function(){
   e1 <- new.env(parent = globalenv())
   exists('e1', mode = 'environment')
}
create_e1()

manipulate_e1 <- function(){
   if ( exists('e1', mode = 'environment') ) {
     assign(a, 1, envir = e1)
     TRUE
   } else {
     FALSE
   }
}

exists('e1', envir = globalenv())
manipulate_e1()
```
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