def shell_safe_json_parse(json_or_dict_string, preserve_order=False):
    """ Allows the passing of JSON or Python dictionary strings. This is needed because certain
    JSON strings in CMD shell are not received in main's argv. This allows the user to specify
    the alternative notation, which does not have this problem (but is technically not JSON). """
    try:
        if not preserve_order:
            return json.loads(json_or_dict_string)
        from collections import OrderedDict
        return json.loads(json_or_dict_string, object_pairs_hook=OrderedDict)
    except ValueError:
        import ast
        return ast.literal_eval(json_or_dict_string)