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Creating and manipulating environment within function

3 messages · Sebastien Bihorel, Rui Barradas

#
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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#
Hello,

Use ?assign instead. And there was a bug in manipulate_e1, it would 
throw an error a not found.


create_e1 <- function(){
   assign("e1", new.env(), envir = globalenv())
   exists('e1', mode = 'environment')
}

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

create_e1()
#> [1] TRUE

exists('e1', envir = globalenv())
#> [1] TRUE

x <- "vec"
e1$vec
#> NULL
manipulate_e1(x)
#> [1] TRUE
e1$vec
#> [1] 1


Hope this helps,

Rui Barradas

?s 21:29 de 30/03/2022, Sebastien Bihorel escreveu:
#
Thanks Rui!

That does the trick indeed!