Python: is using “..%(var)s..” % locals() a good practice?

Question

I discovered this pattern (or anti-pattern) and I am very happy with it.

I feel it is very agile:

def example():
    age = ...
    name = ...
    pri         


        

Answer 1

Never in a million years. It's unclear what the context for formatting is: locals could include almost any variable. self.__dict__ is not as vague. Perfectly awful to leave future developers scratching their heads over what's local and what's not local.

It's an intentional mystery. Why saddle your organization with future maintenance headaches like that?