Bash Command Explainer

How it works

Each line is split at shell operators (&&, ||, |, ;, and redirects) using a longest-match-first regex, so >> and 2>&1 aren't mis-split by their shorter substrings; each resulting segment is tokenized on whitespace while keeping quoted strings intact, and the first token is looked up in a built-in dictionary of common Unix commands and their flags. Backslash-continued lines are merged into a single logical line before this pass, and shebang or comment lines are recognized as a special case rather than run through the command tokenizer.

FAQ

Why does a flag show up as "not in this tool's dictionary"?

The explainer only recognizes flags for the commands it has a built-in entry for; commands or flags outside that curated list still get tokenized and labeled, just without a specific description.

How does it handle a long command split across multiple lines with a trailing backslash?

Lines ending in a backslash are merged with the next line into one logical line before being explained, so a command split across multiple lines for readability is still explained as a single command.