For a task like taking backups on servers that involves invoking bunch of commands, I'd rather not use a scripting language that asks you to open a process, bin

For a task like taking backups on servers that involves invoking bunch of commands, I'd rather not use a scripting language that asks you to open a process, bind variables on its stdin/stdout and all the boilerplate handling. How do you do this in a scripting language without complication? $ ssh remote.server 'mysqldump db | gzip -c' | gunzip -c | mysql db It's the power of individual commands though I admit bash sucks as a language but it got invented forever ago, so can't blame it. But we need something better than bash. Fish is close but not too good.