r - name and place each element of a list in Global Environment

Question

If you have a list but you want each element of the list to be it's own separate element in the global environment e.g.

alist <- list( c(1,2), c(3,4) )
# into
a <- c(1,2)
b <- c(3,4)

Is there an easy way to this? something of the form below perhaps:

mapply(function(x,y){ y <- x }, alist, list("a","b"), SIMPLIFY = FALSE )

Answer 1

Use list2env

alist <- list( a=c(1,2), b=c(3,4) )  # naming list elements
list2env(alist, envir = .GlobalEnv)