Example of revised code to interpret commands.

interp.py

class p(object):
    def __init__(self, *elts):
        """Construct a representation of a path.
        (We'll cheat a little by using a list of strings.)"""
        self.path = elts

    def interp(self, data):
        for p in self.path:
            data = data[p]
        return data
        

commands = { 
    'uptime' : p('serverStatus', 'uptime'),
    'globalLock_lockTime' : p('serverStatus', 'globalLock', 'lockTime')
    ## Fill me in with more elements.
}

def interp(data, cmdName):
    cmd = commands[cmdName]
    return cmd.interp(data)


######################################################################
## For example, let's mock up some sample data and see how this works.

sampleData = {'serverStatus' : {'uptime': 3, 
                                'cpu load' : 1.11,
                                'globalLock' : { 'lockName' : 'sample lock name',
                                                 'lockTime' : 42 }}}
print interp(sampleData, 'uptime')
print interp(sampleData, 'globalLock_lockTime')