 may not be always desirable. Sometimes, we would like to pass a <em>data.table</em> object to a function, and might want to use the <code>:=</code> operator, but <em>wouldn’t</em> want to update the original object. We can accomplish this using the function <code>copy()</code>.</p>
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<p>The <code>copy()</code> function <em>deep</em> copies the input object and therefore any subsequent update