contomman

Is it possible to access the return value of a function used in a thread? The below code works, but I like my functions to explicitly return values rather than abuse the "everything is global" feature of lua.

thread = require "thread"

function foo()
	bar = 1
	return bar --How to access this?
end

t = thread.create(foo)
thread.waitForAll({t}) --Wait for thread to end before obtaining return value
print(bar) -- 1

Somewhat related, Right now I am using threads to achieve a non-blocking io.read(), so I can receive inputs while my timer events still run. Is this good practice or is there a better way to achieve non-blocking io.read() that I have missed.

Thanks for your help and advice!