Pipelines are mainly for short-lived, one-off quick scripts. But they are also really useful for when you control the input data. For example, if you need a sum

Pipelines are mainly for short-lived, one-off quick scripts. But they are also really useful for when you control the input data. For example, if you need a summary report based on the results of a sql query. If you control the inputs and you need to support quotes, spaces, non-white space delimiters, etc... in shell script, then that’s on you. If you don’t control the inputs, then shell scripts are generally a poor match. For example, if you need summary reports from a client, but they sometimes provide the table in xlxs or csv format — shell might not be a good idea. Might be controversial, but I think you can tell who works with shell pipes the most by looking at who uses CSV vs tab-delimited text files. Tabs can still be a pain if you have spaces in data. But if you mix shell scripts with CSV, you’re just asking for trouble.