Improve quoting and parsing of container commands

This is inside its own scope, started on line 444.

In JavaScript, all functions are defined before any top-level code of a file is executed.

The only advantage of this style compared to to ```c.u.parse_words = function parse_words () { }``` is that parse_words can be called before this line is executed.  We don't need this here, so maybe we should use the more direct style.