I was just using the locals() to show equivalence. I think I've done that maybe a handful of times in production code, and it was always an already hairy templating situation. Most of the time, I see:

    "{} world!".format('hello')

or

    "{greeting} world!".format(greeting='hello')

There is a huge value in Python's historical approach of straightforward code built on a relatively small foundation. f-strings are another example of the Python I fell in love with growing up/moving on.