In Python, I want to parse a string and return the numeric portion (may or may not have decimal point) as a float and return the suffix as a string. Examples are:

7.1inch -> 7.1, inch

7.1” -> 7.1, “

7in -> 7.0, in

-10dB -> -10.0, dB

-10.2dB -> -10.2, dB

There’s no space between the numeric portion and suffix. Also, I want to apply this to a Pandas DataFrame column that has this format so that I can sort by the floating point value. I then want to append the suffix back to each element in the column after the sort. Kindly advise on the code to do this. Thanks!