Indeed. Shell scripting can easily get overcomplicated and I agree that moving to a real programming language is better at that point. However, Python isn't nec

Indeed. Shell scripting can easily get overcomplicated and I agree that moving to a real programming language is better at that point. However, Python isn't necessarily the ideal language for it either, because managing child processes with its standard library functionality can get overcomplicated and verbose, particularly once you start dealing with functionality like pipes. So people often resort to generic os.system calls instead and then you get a strange hybrid style.