I agree that you should go to a more robust language when shell scripts get bigger, esp if you are needing or wanting unit tests. I would avoid Python if there

I agree that you should go to a more robust language when shell scripts get bigger, esp if you are needing or wanting unit tests. I would avoid Python if there are lots of dropping into the subprocess module; it suffers the same problem as Go - lots of ceremony and boiler plate to run shell commands. I recommend Ruby or Perl because they can drop into a shell-like mode and you can execute shell commands more “naturally.”