Thanks,

I think I over-emphasized the secondary function, but I can generate the scoping problem as follows. First, at the command line, I can get a function to access objects that were not in its arguments by

ProfileEnv = new.env()
hello.world = "Hello World"
assign('hello.world',hello.world,3,envir=ProfileEnv)

fn1 = function()
{
        hw = get('hello.world',envir=ProfileEnv)
        print(hw)
}

and then call

> fn1()
[1] "Hello World"


Now I want to define a wrapper function

fn2 = function()
{
        ProfileEnv = new.env()
        hello.world = "Hello World"
        assign('hello.world',hello.world,3,envir=ProfileEnv)

        fn1()
}

and if I try

> rm(ProfileEnv)                          # Just to be safe
> rm(hello.world)
> fn2()
Error in get("hello.world", envir = ProfileEnv) :
  object "ProfileEnv" not found

In my actual code, fn1() is really a call to

optim(pars,ProfileErr,....)

and hello.world are quantities that were calculated the last time that ProfileErr was called and that I want to keep track of.

As an alternative simple example, how would I keep a counter for the number of times that optim (or any other generic optimizer) has called ProfileErr?

giles

How can I define environments within a function so that they are visible
to calls to a sub-function?

I think you need to give a simplified, runnable example. (Or at least runnable until it hits the scoping problem you've got.) "Sub-function" isn't R terminology, and it's not clear what you mean by it.

--
Giles Hooker
Assistant Professor:

Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology
Department of Statistical Science
1186 Comstock Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY, 14853

Ph:  (+1 607) 255 1638
Fax: (+1 607) 255 4698

Email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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