About quoting rules: We desperately needs static analysis or IDEs (Emacs plugins, whatever) that "explain" exactly what quotes do in a particular context. When I returned to C++ recently, I was blown away by Clang-Tidy (JetBrains CLion integration). Literally: Clang-Tidy seems to "know what you really want" and give intelligent suggestions. For someone whom is a very average C++ programmer, it instantly leveled me up! I could see the same for someone writing /bin/sh, /bin/ksh, /bin/bash shell commands. If the IDE could give some hints, it would be incredibly helpful to many.