Because a simList works with an environment to hold all objects, all objects within that slot are pass-by-reference. That means it is not possible to simply copy an object with an assignment operator: the two objects will share the same objects. As one simList object changes so will the other. when this is not the desired behaviour, use this function.
copy(sim, objects = TRUE)# S4 method for simList,logical
copy(sim, objects = TRUE)
# S4 method for simList,missing
copy(sim)
A simList object.
Whether the objects contained within the simList environment should be copied. Default = TRUE, which may be slow.