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A variable can be returned within a while loop by declaring the variable outside the loop and modifying it within the loop until the desired value is reached. Once the desired value is reached, the value can be returned outside the loop.

Here's an example:

def find_number(numbers, target):
    found = False
    i = 0

    while i < len(numbers) and not found:
        if numbers[i] == target:
            found = True
        else:
            i += 1

    if found:
        return i
    else:
        return -1

In this code, the find_number function takes in a list of numbers and a target value. The variable found is initialized to False and i is set to 0.

The while loop will run as long as i is less than the length of numbers and the found variable is still False. Within the loop, we check if the current element in the list (numbers[i]) is equal to the target. If it is, we set found to True. If it's not, we increment i by 1.

Once the loop has completed, we check if found is True. If it is, then we return the value of i (which represents the index where the target was found). If found is still False, then we return -1 to indicate that the target was not found in the list.