Convert C-style flat-file structs to python dicts

flatfile.py

import struct

def parse(my_struct, my_string):
    """Takes a large string such as the following:
        char record1[2];
        char record2[10];
        char record3[15];
        char record4[12];
    and a target string that represents the struct's data, and returns a
    dict with the struct entries as keys and the unpacked data as values."""
    fmt_string = ''
    keys_in_order = []
    values_in_order = []

    total_length = 0
    for line in my_struct.split('\n'):
        #Skip blank lines
        if line.strip() == '':
            continue

        #Skip comment lines
        if '/*' in line or '//' in line:
            continue

        #Check for data type.  Only 'char' supported for now
        if line.strip().split()[0] == 'char':
            if '[' in line and ']' in line:
                #determine length of string
                length = int(line.split('[')[1].split(']')[0])

                fmt = '%ds' % length
            else:
                length = 1
                fmt = 'c'
        else:
            raise KeyError

        #Now determine key name
        key = line.split('[')[0].strip().split(' ')[-1]

        #Append format and keys
        fmt_string += fmt
        total_length += length
        keys_in_order.append(key)

    if total_length != len(my_string):
        raise ValueError("Struct declares a string %d long, input string is %d" % (len(my_string),total_length))

    values_in_order = struct.unpack(fmt_string, my_string)
    return_dict = dict(zip(keys_in_order, values_in_order))

    return return_dict