Shells aren't designed for general programming, they are designed for quick and dirty tasks. They are excellent for that purpose, not because the shell is usefu

Shells aren't designed for general programming, they are designed for quick and dirty tasks. They are excellent for that purpose, not because the shell is useful, but because of the large ecosystem of tools that makes the shell useful. Virtually any problem of "how do I do X in bash?" is solved trivially by Awk. If you don't know Awk, then any number of tools cobbled together in an inefficient, janky Bash function will get the job done so you can get on with your day. If you need something robust, use an actual programming language, as "robust" things already need significant investment in development, testing, and maintenance.