After running into this and many other issues in sh/bash scripts (such as the pitfalls of handling newlines and spaces correctly with the splitting rules, the a

After running into this and many other issues in sh/bash scripts (such as the pitfalls of handling newlines and spaces correctly with the splitting rules, the awkwardness of basic features such as lists or arithmetic, and the generally inconsistent and obscure syntax), I've moved all my shell scripts to Python3 and I have no regrets about it. Calling external programs is still very easy with the subprocess module. And it's installed pretty much everywhere you have sh/bash on. To be fair, I am not even sure if creating a new shell scripting language is something worthwhile in this day and age. There's some value in the convenience of instantly turning a sequence of commands you just manually typed into a script, but there's a conflict in that the shell has to provide you a way to hack a sequence of actions together with as few characters as possible, while a script has to be comprehensible, maintainable and extensible. And the inertia you would have to overcome to successfully introduce a new programming language in addition to a new shell makes it intractable.