Regex on a Dictionary

[Stanley Denman]

On Tuesday, February 13, 2018 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-6, Mark Lawrence wrote:
> On 13/02/18 13:11, Stanley Denman wrote:
> > I am trying to performance a regex on a "string" of text that python isinstance is telling me is a dictionary.  When I run the code I get the following error:
> > 
> > {'/Title': '1F:  Progress Notes  Src.:  MILANI, JOHN C Tmt. Dt.:  05/12/2014 - 05/28/2014 (9 pages)', '/Page': IndirectObject(465, 0), '/Type': '/FitB'}
> > 
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >    File "C:\Users\stand\Desktop\PythonSublimeText.py", line 9, in <module>
> >      x=MyRegex.findall(MyDict)
> > TypeError: expected string or bytes-like object
> > 
> > Here is the "string" of code I am working with:
> 
> Please call it a dictionary as in the subject line, quite clearly it is 
> not a string in any way, shape or form.
> 
> > 
> > {'/Title': '1F:  Progress Notes  Src.:  MILANI, JOHN C Tmt. Dt.:  05/12/2014 - 05/28/2014 (9 pages)', '/Page': IndirectObject(465, 0), '/Type': '/FitB'}
> > 
> > I want to grab the name "MILANI, JOHN C" and the last date "-mm/dd/yyyy" as a pair such that if I have  X numbers of string like the above I will end out with N pairs of values (name and date)/  Here is my code:
> >   
> > import PyPDF2,re
> > pdfFileObj=open('x.pdf','rb')
> > pdfReader=PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
> > Result=pdfReader.getOutlines()
> > MyDict=(Result[-1][0])
> > print(MyDict)
> > print(isinstance(MyDict,dict))
> > MyRegex=re.compile(r"MILANI,")
> > x=MyRegex.findall(MyDict)
> > print(x)
> > 
> > Thanks in advance for any help.
> > 
> 
> Was the string methods solution that I gave a week or so ago so bad that 
> you still think that you need a regex to solve this?
> 
> -- 
> My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
> what you can do for our language.
> 
> Mark Lawrence

My Apology Mark.  You took the time to give me the basis of a non-regex solution and I had not taken the time to fully review your answer.Did not understand it at first blush, but I think now I do.