The purpose of salias is to provide an aliasing system for programs where arguments may wish to be aliased. This is more useful than just a shell environment variable as an argument, since it can ``repeat'' options, such as GnuPG's --recipient option as needed. Also, unlike shell enviornment variables, it can be used transparently inside of other programs, strengthening it's drop-in capabilities.
salias was initially designed for wrapping around GnuPG, providing aliases for keys. However, the design easily extends to being useful for all types of programs.
http://salias.sourceforge.net/
See INSTALL for notes on installation.