python - How do I test if an object is a regex pattern?

Question

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Type of compiled regex object in python

Usually I would do isinstance(obj, ThePatternType) but I cannot see how to get ThePatternType.

When I create an instance of a compiled regex pattern, the type gives:

type(pattern)
<type '_sre.SRE_Pattern'>

But for some reason I cannot do from _sre import SRE_Pattern

I realise I could do, ThePatternType = type(re.compile(r'.')), but that just seems wrong!