how do I turn a string of key-values to a proper dict in python?

Let’s say I have a dictionary as a string with an unknown number of spaces in between:

'address: 123 fake street city: new york state: new york population: 500000'

How do I get

{'address': '123 fake street',
 'city': 'new york',
 'state': 'new york',
 'population': 500000}

OR even lists or tuples to the effect of:

['address', '123 fake street'],
['city', 'new york'...]

(1) Assume keys are always single words with a colon

key:

city:

population:

(2) Assume edge cases where Address: may be "C/O John Smith @ Building X, S/W"

>Solution :

Try (regex101):

import re

s = "address: C/O John Smith @ Building X, S/W city: new york state: new york    population:        500000"

d = dict(re.findall(r"([^\s]+)\s*:\s*(.*?)\s*(?=[^\s]+:|$)", s))
print(d)

Prints:

{
    "address": "C/O John Smith @ Building X, S/W",
    "city": "new york",
    "state": "new york",
    "population": "500000",
}