TBH, calling Bash 'write-only' makes me a bit sad. Bash should be very easy to read for people familiar with the command line. Except for boilerplate (e.g. set

TBH, calling Bash 'write-only' makes me a bit sad. Bash should be very easy to read for people familiar with the command line. Except for boilerplate (e.g. set switches, documented in 'help set', but just ignore them if you're just reading) or if switches (documented in 'man test', but you really just need to memorize three or so) and a handful of commands that don't tend to be used outside of scripts -- all have a help or man page. You could argue that DOS batch files are hard to read too. Of course, bash's tacked on features -- regex, array/hash syntax, etc. can get a bit hairy, but it's all highly documented. To me, bash is more the polar opposite: hard* to write, easy to read. * not that hard