Convert, or unformat, a string to variables (like format(), but in reverse) in Python

Just to build on Uche’s answer, I was looking for a way to reverse a string via a pattern with kwargs. So I put together the following function:

def string_to_dict(string, pattern):
    regex = re.sub(r'{(.+?)}', r'(?P<_\1>.+)', pattern)
    values = list(re.search(regex, string).groups())
    keys = re.findall(r'{(.+?)}', pattern)
    _dict = dict(zip(keys, values))
    return _dict

Which works as per:

>>> p = 'hello, my name is {name} and I am a {age} year old {what}'

>>> s = p.format(name="dan", age=33, what="developer")
>>> s
'hello, my name is dan and I am a 33 year old developer'
>>> string_to_dict(s, p)
{'age': '33', 'name': 'dan', 'what': 'developer'}

>>> s = p.format(name="cody", age=18, what="quarterback")
>>> s
'hello, my name is cody and I am a 18 year old quarterback'
>>> string_to_dict(s, p)
{'age': '18', 'name': 'cody', 'what': 'quarterback'}