Agreed. I really want a language that makes it easy to run subprocesses and do other Unix/shell magic, while being more straightforward and modern than Perl. I

Agreed. I really want a language that makes it easy to run subprocesses and do other Unix/shell magic, while being more straightforward and modern than Perl. I think a good way of doing this would be to make a shell that has more expressive power and a clearer syntax.