Question

I’m working in R, and I want to do, for example,

printx <- function() {
  x <- 1
  printy()
  return(x)
}

printy <- function() {
  print(x)
}

because I don’t want to keep passing around tons of variables (also, there is no x in the global environment). Is there a way to do this? All functions can access the global environment but what about the ones between the function’s environment and the global?

Answer 1

Maybe

printx <- function() {
  x <- 1
  printy()
  return(x)
}

printy <- function() {
  print(get('x',envir=parent.frame()))
}

> x<-0
> printy()
[1] 0
> printx()
[1] 1
[1] 1

This would use the x to be printed by printy which was associated with the environment the function was called in.

One other possibility would be to create a new environment

e1<-new.env(parent = baseenv())

> assign('x',12,envir=e1)
> x
[1] 0
> get('x',e1)
[1] 12