Python: Using vars() to assign a string to a variable

Question

I find it very useful to be able to create new variables during runtime and create a dictionary of the results for processing later, i.e. writing to a file:

Answer 1

From the help for vars,

vars(...) vars([object]) -> dictionary

Without arguments, equivalent to locals().
With an argument, equivalent to object.__dict__.

You are using it without vars, so let's look at the help for locals()

locals(...) locals() -> dictionary

Update and return a dictionary containing the current scope's local

variables.

So this answers you first two questions. vars() returns a dictionary to the local variables that is indexed by the name of the variable as a string. The scope is local.

I'm not sure about the third question, but it does seem like kind of a hack which isn't a good sign. I guess if you're careful about using this only in the correct scope you can get by with it.