How can I get the return value of a function passed to multiprocessing.Process?

Question

In the example code below, I'd like to get the return value of the function worker. How can I go about doing this? Where is this value stored?

Example Code:

import multiprocessing

def worker(procnum):
    '''worker function'''
    print str(procnum) + ' represent!'
    return procnum


if __name__ == '__main__':
    jobs = []
    for i in range(5):
        p = multiprocessing.Process(target=worker, args=(i,))
        jobs.append(p)
        p.start()

    for proc in jobs:
        proc.join()
    print jobs

Output:

0 represent!
1 represent!
2 represent!
3 represent!
4 represent!
[<Process(Process-1, stopped)>, <Process(Process-2, stopped)>, <Process(Process-3, stopped)>, <Process(Process-4, stopped)>, <Process(Process-5, stopped)>]

I can't seem to find the relevant attribute in the objects stored in jobs.

Answer 1

Use a shared variable to communicate. For example, like this,

Example Code:

import multiprocessing


def worker(procnum, return_dict):
    """worker function"""
    print(str(procnum) + " represent!")
    return_dict[procnum] = procnum


if __name__ == "__main__":
    manager = multiprocessing.Manager()
    return_dict = manager.dict()
    jobs = []
    for i in range(5):
        p = multiprocessing.Process(target=worker, args=(i, return_dict))
        jobs.append(p)
        p.start()

    for proc in jobs:
        proc.join()
    print(return_dict.values())

Output:

0 represent!
1 represent!
3 represent!
2 represent!
4 represent!
[0, 1, 3, 2, 4]