Based on no evidence whatsoever, my gut tells me that trying to set up a tidy system of abstractions to clean up the problem would produce something closer to a

Based on no evidence whatsoever, my gut tells me that trying to set up a tidy system of abstractions to clean up the problem would produce something closer to a programming language than a shell language. On the other hand, it's possible that exposure to *nix has simply impoverished my imagination when it comes to things like this.