[R] making changes to global variables in functions

[R. Michael Weylandt]

No pointer functionality in R (that I know of), but if you want to
return two objects as one the standard way is to put them in a list
and to return that list.

Michael

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Yev <kirpich at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to write a function that takes several objects with many
> different attributes and then changes their attributes. So what I wanted to
> happen in the simplified example below is for the function to change the
> attributes of the objects state1 and state2 that are passed to it. But
> because stateA and stateB are local, this isn't working. Are there any easy
> solutions?
>
> e.g., if I could combine the two objects stateA and stateB into a single
> object, I could return it and then assign it back to objects state1 and
> state2. Or if I could pass a pointer to the original object.. But I cannot
> find an easy way of doing either.  Thanks in advance..
>
> state1 <- list(n=100, won=0)
> state2 <- list(n=100, won=0)
>
> fight2 <- function(stateA, stateB){
>   stateA$n <- 50
>   stateB$n <-50
> }
>
> fight2(state1,state2)
>
> state1$n
> state2$n
>
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>
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