What's worse, "//echo" and "-a" are strings too, so, depending on how it's implemented

"//echo -a Would require quotes, but if I wanted a \"quote\" in my text, I'd need \\these\\ :-D"
Each line is a string containing a command -> to parse the command you still lose the spaces?

or
// "echo" "-a Would require quotes, but if I wanted a \"quote\" in my text, I'd need \\these\\ :-D"
Each line is a command string followed by an arguments string -> $1 is still the first word, $2 the second, $1-2 is still word1-onespace-word2...

or
//"echo" "-a" "Would require quotes, but if I wanted a \"quote\" in my text, I'd need \\these\\ :-D"
Each line is a list of strings, the first contains the commands, each next one contains a parameter -> $1 = "-a", $2 = "Would require quotes, but if I wanted a \"quote\" in my text, I'd need \\these\\ :-D" This seems to work ok, but if you want to use $4 to mean the 4th word, you'll have to do a $gettok yourself, or hope the caller used /customalias "word1" "word2" " spa ces " "word4" "word5".

And then we can start using %vars and $identifiers (say last type)

"var" "%cmd" "=" "echo \"-a Hi, \" $+ $nick $+ \"!\""
%cmd $+ " How are you doing?"

Will this execute the command "echo \"-a Hi, \" $+ $nick $+ \"!\"" with one parameter? Should we add extra quotes in the quoted command? Should we force a second evaluation of that string? ...

Just think about it...