Shake draws inspiration from Python's sh. Which looks to me like a port of http://perldoc.perl.org/Shell.html. However after experience, that original version now comes with important warnings about things like metacharacter quoting not being able to be done in a portable and safe way.

It is easy to get things 95% right, and I am sure that Shake does that. But think twice before using it for production programs, particularly if there is any possibility of it encountering untrusted input.