Hey all, super confused by variables scope in Julia. I have the following function

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1

Hey all, super confused by variables scope in Julia. I have the following function

function init_agents(;teams, workpatterns)::Vector{Agent}
    # print(typeof(teams), " ", typeof(workpatterns))
    for (teamname, info) in teams
        wp = workpatterns
        if haskey(info, "workpatterns")
            for (activitytype, activityspecs) in info["workpatterns"]
                wp[activitytype] = activityspecs
            end
        end
        print(teamname, " ", wporkpatterns, "\n")
    end
    return []
end

Variable wp is, I assume, a variable that only exists within the for scope, hence is reset for each iteration. However, when I update wp[activitytype] = activityspecs, it looks like it impacts the workpatterns variable itself.
My understanding is that the wp = workpatterns instruction simply creates a new reference to the workpatterns variable, hence propagating any changes made to wp to workpatterns
How can I make sure that it doesn’t? I heard about @view but not sure if it’s the correct solution here.

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2

Yes, wp = workpatterns binds the name wp to the same object as workpatterns. To make wp a copy of workpatterns, write:

wp = copy(workpatterns)

Or if you also want to avoid modifications to workpatterns in case of accessing deeper levels of its structure:

wp = deepcopy(workpatterns)
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