R - get all variables created from function call

Question

This is crazy, and just out of intellectual curiosity: Can I run a function in R in such a way that after the function completes I can get all variables created when the function executed? So the ability to look into a function right before it returned? I don't mean entering the function in debug mode.

Answer 1

To get all variables and their values as a list you could use the last line of the function in this example:

myFunction=function(){
  a="lolcat"
  b=data.frame(firstCol=1:3,secondCol=letters[1:3])
  d=list()
  d[["someName"]]=10:13
  sapply(ls(),function(x)get(x),simplify=F,USE.NAMES=T)
}

myResults=myFunction()

myResults

Output:

$a
[1] "lolcat"

$b
  firstCol secondCol
1        1         a
2        2         b
3        3         c

$d
$d$someName
[1] 10 11 12 13