[jquast]

I wish python had case statements for this very problem. If the statement blocks can be defined by a common function signature, your example could use

  {'start':  fn_start,
   'stop': fn_stop,
  }.get(
    argv[1] if len(argv) > 1 else None,
    fn_undefined
  )(*args, **kwargs)

I used this in a demonstration terminal nibbles/worms video game clone, https://github.com/jquast/blessed/blob/master/bin/worms.py#L...