The trouble with that approach is that you have to escape special characters: $ explain cat filename | sort # won't work $ explain 'cat filename | sort' # pre

The trouble with that approach is that you have to escape special characters: $ explain cat filename | sort # won't work $ explain 'cat filename | sort' # presumably would work I wonder if the best approach is to make `explain` behave like a prompt. If there was some way it could inherit bash's command history, even better $ explain explain> cat filename | sort