execline is a (non-interactive) scripting language, like sh; but its syntax is quite different from a traditional shell syntax. The execlineb program is meant to be used as an interpreter for a text file; the other commands are essentially useful inside an execlineb script. execline is as powerful as a shell: it features conditional loops, getopt-style option handling, filename globbing, and more. Meanwhile, its syntax is far more logic and predictable than the shell's syntax, and has no security issues. NOTE: Upstream recommends building skarnet.org softwares with static libraries as most of skarnet.org softwares are small enough that using shared libraries are generally not worth using. Therefore, by default, shared libraries are not built and binaries are linked against the static versions of the skarnet.org libraries. If you want to also build the shared libraries, pass BUILD_SHARED=yes environment variable to the SlackBuild script like below: BUILD_SHARED=yes ./execline.SlackBuild Similarly, to avoid building the static libraries, you can pass BUILD_STATIC=no to the script. For example, to only build the shared libraries and not the static ones, you can do something like: BUILD_SHARED=yes BUILD_STATIC=no ./execline.SlackBuild If you just want to build and use skarnet.org softwares, building only the static libraries should be sufficient. If you want the binaries to be linked against the shared versions of the skarnet.org libraries, pass LINK_SHARED=yes to the script.