One concern I have with this approach is that like all code, it becomes hairier and more complicated over time as it becomes more robust and special cases are h

One concern I have with this approach is that like all code, it becomes hairier and more complicated over time as it becomes more robust and special cases are handled. Once bash scripts reach a certain size and complexity, I've found they become quite difficult to follow. I don't know if this is inherently a quality of bash, or of people who tend to write bash, or of my ability to read bash scripts, but I find larger Python, Ruby, etc. programs a lot easier to follow. On the other hand, even a 300 line shell script is easier to follow than a 10,000 line Java program.