python - cant reference a global dictionary entry -

i aware global variables not best way deal things in case fine doing. not going doing heavy read/writes reads.

    alive = {'subalive': true, 'testalive': true};      def sub_listener(conn): #listens kill main          global alive         while true:         data = conn.recv()         if data == "kill":            alive['subalive'] = false; #value kill             break       def subprocess(conn, threadnum):          t = thread(target=sub_listener, args=(conn,))          count = 0                          threadval = threadnum           t.start()          run = alive[subalive];          while run:                print "thread %d run number = %d" % (threadval, count)                count = count + 1         sub_parent, sub_child = pipe()        runnum = int(raw_input("enter number: "))         threadnum = int(raw_input("enter number of threads: "))         print "starting threads"         in range(threadnum):            p = process(target=subprocess, args=(sub_child, i))            p.start()         print "starting run"         time.sleep(runnum)          print "terminating subprocess run"        in range(threadnum):            sub_parent.send("kill") #sends kill listener         p.join() 

i error

 nameerror: global name 'testalive' not defined  traceback (most recent call last):  file "/usr/lib/python2.7/multiprocessing/process.py", line 258, in _bootstrap    self.run()  file "/usr/lib/python2.7/multiprocessing/process.py", line 114, in run    self._target(*self._args, **self._kwargs)  file "multiprocessdemo.py", line 38, in subprocess    run = alive[subalive];  nameerror: global name 'subalive' not defined 

i have tried accessing dictionary few different ways , can't seem find out wrong on google. if use separate variables work wont dynamically scale well.

put quotes around subalive:

run = alive['subalive']