I want to run a function for 10s then do other stuff. This is my code using Timer

from threading import Timer
import timedef timeout():b='true'return ba='false'    
t = Timer(10,timeout)
t.start()while(a=='false'):print '1'time.sleep(1)
print '2'

I know that using Timer I can print something at the end of the timer (print b instead of return b return true after 10s). What I want to know is : can I get the value returned by timeout() inside "a" to perform my while loop correctly?

Or is there another way to do it with another function ?

The return value of the function is just dropped by Timer, as we can see in the source. A way to go around this, is to pass a mutable argument and mutate it inside the function:

def work(container):container[0] = Truea = [False]
t = Timer(10, work, args=(a,))
t.start()while not a[0]:print "Waiting, a[0]={0}...".format(a[0])time.sleep(1)print "Done, result: {0}.".format(a[0])

Or, use global, but that's not the way a gentleman goes.