Clear workspace with user-defined void function in R

Question

I would like to have a simple function to clear my workspace in R, but I seem to be having issues. I have my code below.

clear() = function() rm(list=ls())

When I define this function and call it by simply using clear() , the code executes but my workspace is not cleared. I tried various formats of defining the function to see if anything funky was going on, but it all gives the same result. Simply using the rm(list=ls()) function works, but not when I embed it in my function. Can anyone point me in the right direction? And what am I not understanding about user-defined R functions?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The problem is that when you call ls() inside a function it returns the objects in the environment of that function by default. Same with rm() .

Try this:

clear <- function() {
  rm(list=ls(.GlobalEnv), envir=.GlobalEnv)
}