You gravely misunderstand. The point of evaluation of the expressions is the same. >>> template = t'Hello, {name}' is still an error if you haven't defined

You gravely misunderstand. The point of evaluation of the expressions is the same. >>> template = t'Hello, {name}' is still an error if you haven't defined name. BUT the result of a t-string is not a string; it is a Template which has two attributes: strings: ["Hello, ", ""] interpolations: [name] So you can then operate on the parts separately (HTML escape, pass to SQL driver, etc.).