Agreed something like

    explain tar xzvf archive.tar.gz

would be great.

Author: Do you have an API?

Once the source is released, it should be possible to make such a client without needing to connect to a web service. These breakdowns are figured out by the Python code written by the author.

That's of course great but as a child of our time I want my explain command now ;)

Posted it for zsh, should be easy to make it work for other shells:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6297957

How about this. Works on zsh and bash (at least for basic commands).

https://gist.github.com/axelson/6384869

You should be able to build this as a bash function I think.

After seeing this I've already begun writing a plugin for Gate One to do the same thing:

https://github.com/liftoff/GateOne

Soon (I hope) you'll be able to "sudo pip install gateone" on your Ubuntu machine and be able to access it in your browser on localhost (or remotely if you so desire).

I had plans to add a feature like this to the help plugin but it didn't work out and I forgot all about it. This article has suddenly renewed my interest :)