parser differences. I've tried to follow mpw's command line parsing algorithm but there are some differences. Mostly this is because set q '"' ; echo {q} really " is equivalent to echo " really " mpw removes # comments before shell expansion so this _is_ an error: echo {q} # " - mpw doesn't split on ; until after variables are expanded. I split before variable expansion. - escape new-line is not allowed in a '' or {} string. - quote matching happens when the line is read.