Parse a Maya MEL command string into the command name, args and kwargs.

parse_mel_cmd.py

def parse_mel_cmd(melStr):
    """Return the command, args and kwargs for a MEL command string"""
    
    # Get python variant and split of pymel import line
    import pymel.tools.mel2py as mel2py
    pyCmd = mel2py.mel2pyStr(melStr)
    pyCmd = pyCmd.splitlines()[1]
    
    cmd, arguments = pyCmd.split("(", 1)
    args, kwargs = eval("dummy" + "".join(pyCmd.partition("(")[1:]), {}, dict(dummy=lambda *x, **y: (x, y)))
    
    return {'cmd': cmd,
            'args': args,
            'kwargs': kwargs}
            

print parse_mel_cmd('setAttr |balloon_model:balloon_GRP.translate -type "double3" -13.076091 21.600848 -0.975668;')
# {'cmd': 'setAttr', 
#  'args': ('|balloon_model:balloon_GRP.translate', -13.076091, 21.600848, -0.975668), 
#  'kwargs': {'type': 'double3'}}