Recursive copying of nested environments, and other "hard to copy" objects

When copying environments and all the objects contained within them, there are no copies made: it is a pass-by-reference operation. Sometimes, a deep copy is needed, and sometimes, this must be recursive (i.e., environments inside environments).

Copy(object, filebackedDir = tempdir(), ...)

# S4 method for ANY
Copy(object, filebackedDir = tempdir(), ...)

# S4 method for data.table
Copy(object, filebackedDir = tempdir(), ...)

# S4 method for environment
Copy(object, filebackedDir = tempdir(), ...)

# S4 method for list
Copy(object, filebackedDir = tempdir(), ...)

# S4 method for data.frame
Copy(object, filebackedDir = tempdir(), ...)

# S4 method for Raster
Copy(object, filebackedDir = tempdir(), ...)

Arguments

object	An R object (likely containing environments) or an environment.
filebackedDir	A directory to copy any files that are backing R objects, currently only valid for Raster classes. Defaults to tempdir(), which is unlikely to be very useful.
...	Only used for custom Methods

See also

.robustDigest

Examples

e <- new.env()
e$abc <- letters
e$one <- 1L
e$lst <- list(W = 1:10, X = runif(10), Y = rnorm(10), Z = LETTERS[1:10])
ls(e)
#> [1] "abc" "lst" "one"

# 'normal' copy
f <- e
ls(f)
#> [1] "abc" "lst" "one"
f$one
#> [1] 1
f$one <- 2L
f$one
#> [1] 2
e$one ## uh oh, e has changed!
#> [1] 2

# deep copy
e$one <- 1L
g <- Copy(e)
ls(g)
#> [1] "abc" "lst" "one"
g$one
#> [1] 1
g$one <- 3L
g$one
#> [1] 3
f$one
#> [1] 1
e$one
#> [1] 1