Best practices for generating a tnsnames.ora entry

I need to integrate some scripts that export and import data from Oracle databases. They are shell scripts that rely on the TNS name being set up (e.g., scott/tiger@tns).

The application owners are likely not going to change the scripts to support EZConnect syntax, so my best option right now is to automate the TNS name setup. The file, for reference, sits here:

$ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/tnsnames.ora

Is there already a best practice / existing utility for doing this? Or am I just going to have to write a shell script to pump out the task?