Using locals() and format() method for strings: are there any caveats?

Question

Are there any disadvantages, caveats or bad practice warnings about using the following pattern?

def buildString(user, name = \'john\', age=22):
    userId =         


        

Answer 1

Pre Python 3.6 answer

This is very old, but if you find yourself using .format the one caveat I have encountered with passing in **locals is that if you don't have that variable defined anywhere, it will break. Explicitly stating what variables are passed in will avoid this in most modern IDEs.

foo = "bar"
"{foo} and {baz} are pair programming".format(**locals())