What is the difference between assign() and <<- in R?

Question

The normal approach to writing functions in R (as I understand) is to avoid side-effects and return a value from a function.

contained <- function(x) {
          


        

Answer 1

According to the manual page here,

The operators <<- and ->> cause a search to made through the environment for an existing definition of the variable being assigned.

I've never had to do this in practice, but to my mind, assign wins a lot of points for specifying the environment exactly, without even having to think about R's scoping rules. The <<- performs a search through environments and is therefore a little bit harder to interpret.

EDIT: In deference to @Dirk and @Hadley, it sounds like assign is the appropriate way to actually assign to the global environment (when that's what you know you want), while <<- is the appropriate way to "bump up" to a broader scope.

Answer 2

As pointed out by @John in his answer, assign lets you specify the environment specifically. A specific application would be in the following:

testfn <- function(x){

    x_squared <- NULL

    escape <- function(x){
        x_squared  <<- x^2
        assign("x_times_x", x*x, envir = parent.frame(n = 1))
    }

    escape(x)

    print(x_squared)
    print(x_times_x)
}

where we use both <<- and assign. Notice that if you want to use <<- to assign to the environment of the top level function, you need to declare/initialise the variable. However, with assign you can use parent.frame(1) to specify the encapsulating environment.

Answer 3

Thomas Lumley answers this in a superb post on r-help the other day. <<- is about the enclosing environment so you can do thing like this (and again, I quote his post from April 22 in this thread):

make.accumulator<-function(){
    a <- 0
    function(x) {
        a <<- a + x
        a
    }
}

> f<-make.accumulator()
> f(1)
[1] 1
> f(1)
[1] 2
> f(11)
[1] 13
> f(11)
[1] 24

This is a legitimate use of <<- as "super-assignment" with lexical scope. And not simply to assign in the global environment. For that, Thomas has these choice words:

The Evil and Wrong use is to modify variables in the global environment.

Very good advice.