How to check if an R environment exists

Question

I would like to check if an R environment exists, but the standard exists() function doesn't accept an environment as argument:

storage <- new.env(parent = emptyenv())

storage
#<environment: 0xeb3195c>

exists(storage)
#Error in exists(storage) : invalid first argument

Is there any way of checking if an environment has been defined? Or is it an intrinsically wrong thing to do? Thanks!

Answer 1

exists takes a character argument:

exists("storage")

Though note that this will return TRUE even if storage is not an environment. You will either have to check it using is.environment as Señor O suggests, or pass mode="environment":

exists("storage", mode="environment")