I came to the same realization and that's why I've moved to octave. Octave's a much better "bash" shell. It works much more nicely for integrating tools on unix

I came to the same realization and that's why I've moved to octave. Octave's a much better "bash" shell. It works much more nicely for integrating tools on unix. I often build things that mix specialized C/C++/Fortran programs, octave and R. Octave makes it so much easier to assemble these things. You can use each tool for its strengths.