Yup, it's already been done with 'shopt -s simple_word_eval' in Oil, see right above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24086213 https://news.ycombinator.co

Yup, it's already been done with 'shopt -s simple_word_eval' in Oil, see right above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24086213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24086213 And yes I drafted a blog post called "Unix Shell Should Evolve Like Perl 5" which says exactly what you are saying: http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2020/07/blog-roadmap.html#the-unix-shell-should-evolve-like-perl-5 http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2020/07/blog-roadmap.html#the-u... And Oil has already done it. It needs to be faster, but that's an inevitability based on progress so far. Why Use Oil? http://www.oilshell.org/why.html http://www.oilshell.org/why.html