"Extracting" a dictionary

[Leif K-Brooks]

Daniel Klein wrote:
> Is there a way to 'extract' a dictionary into the current namespace? 
> That is, if you have
> {'foo' : 23, 'bar' : 42}
> you would get a variable foo with value 23 and a variable bar with value 
> 42? Such a function would of course only work on string keys and would 
> probably have to check that, but still, it sounds practical enough that 
> surely someone else thought of it before.

 >>> vars = {'foo': 23, 'bar': 42}
 >>> locals().update(vars)
 >>> foo
23
 >>> bar
42