execline - script language to rely entirely on chain loading https://skarnet.org/software/execline/grammar.html execline is the first script language to rely entirely on chain loading. An execline script is a single argv , made of a chain of programs designed to perform their action then exec() into the next one. The execlineb command is a launcher : it reads and parses a text file, converting it to an argv , then executes into that argv . It does nothing more. Straightforward scripts like nice -10 echo blah will be run just as they are, without the shell overhead. Here is what the script could look like: #!/command/execlineb -P nice -10 echo blah More complex scripts will include calls to other execline commands, which are meant to provide some control over the process state and execution flow from inside an argv .