WriteXLS: 'object not found' error within function

Dear All,

I am using WriteXLS to write tables with multiple sheets with the command:

WriteXLS("tables", ExcelFileName = fileName, SheetNames = tableList, perl = "perl",
          verbose = FALSE, Encoding = c("UTF-8", "latin1"),
          row.names = TRUE, col.names = TRUE,
          AdjWidth = TRUE, AutoFilter = FALSE, BoldHeaderRow = FALSE,
          FreezeRow = 0, FreezeCol = 0,
          envir = parent.frame())


...where "tables" is the name of a list of data.frames which are the tables to go into my sheets. I am having no problem running my code unless it is within a function in which case I get the error:

"Error in get(as.character(x), envir = envir) : object 'tables' not found"

I have checked that there is not an issue with scope using these two lines within my function immediately before calling the WriteXLS function:

print(class(tables))
flush.console()
[1] "list"


At least I would have thought this would have ruled out any scope-related issues. Has anyone else had this problem or have any ideas why it might be happening?

Thanks,

Scott


PS here is the function in full:

makeTables <- function(design, designInfo, oldMatrix, matrix, annot, tableList)
{
rownames(design) <- designInfo[,1]

fit <- lmFit(matrix, design)
fit <- eBayes(fit)

tables<-list()

	for (i in 1:length(tableList))
	{
	table <- makeTable(oldMatrix, matrix, annot, fit, tableList[i])
	print(paste(tableList[i], "=", sep=""))
	print(table)
	tables[[i]] <- table
	}

#Saving bit (set to FALSE if not using)
saveIt <- TRUE

	if(saveIt)
	{
	fileName <- paste0("~",paste(colnames(design)[2:length(colnames(design))], collapse = "+"),".xls")

	print(paste("sheetnames=",length(tableList),

	print(class(tables))
	flush.console()

	WriteXLS("tables", ExcelFileName = fileName, SheetNames = tableList, perl = "perl",
          verbose = FALSE, Encoding = c("UTF-8", "latin1"),
          row.names = TRUE, col.names = TRUE,
          AdjWidth = TRUE, AutoFilter = FALSE, BoldHeaderRow = FALSE,
          FreezeRow = 0, FreezeCol = 0,
          envir = parent.frame())
	}
}

test()

test()