Causing a copy of a function, rather than a pointer to it, to be assigned to a variable name.

[Dlhfrmboi]

Normally, assignment in R makes a copy. For example, in

bar <- "aaa"
foo <- bar
foo <- "bbb"

the last line doesn't change the variable bar in any way. But consider the following reprex. Let's say there's a function

foo1 <- function(x, y){
z <- (x - y)
return((x - y) / z)
}

which gives me these results:

foo1(1, 5)
[1] 1
foo1(7, 9)
[1] 1
foo1(1, 1)
[1] NaN

Suppose that foo1 is not the reprex I have here, but some long, complicated function where the reason for the unexpected result is not immediately clear, so in order to understand the problem, I need to run it a line at a time. Suppose further that for whatever reason (e.g it's code that someone else is responsible for), I don't want to tamper with foo1 itself, only to understand what went wrong with the input I gave it (e.g., in the reprex, the two arguments can't be equal if you require that the value returned be 1). So I try the following:

foo2 <- foo1
debug(foo2)
foo2(1,1)

I go into debug mode, understand that the two arguments have to be different, then remove my copy of the function...

rm(foo2)

...and think I'm done. But then when I do

foo1(1,1.01)

I go into debug mode

debugging in: foo1(1, 1.01)

because, if I understand aright, my assignment of foo1 to foo2 just created a pointer, not a true copy. So when I did

debug(foo2)

it put foo1, which I didn't want to change in any way, into debug mode. Is there a way to get R to do copy-on-assignment when I use the assignment operator with a function, so that I create a new function which is identical to the old one in its content but has a different memory location?

[nwerth]

data.table::copy() will force R to make a copy:

library(data.table)

a <- setdiff
debug(a)
a(1, 1)       # Goes into debug mode
setdiff(1, 1) # Nothing happens
a(1, 1)       # Goes into debug mode

Of course, for your specific example, you can use debugonce(foo1).