Or it is a sign that if something is this complex, perhaps you shouldn't be doing it in the language to begin with. AKA, a code smell. Bash is tiny, flexible,

Or it is a sign that if something is this complex, perhaps you shouldn't be doing it in the language to begin with. AKA, a code smell. Bash is tiny, flexible, and highly effective at what it was designed to do: shell scripting, which is effectively user OS commandline automation. It would be akin to me complaining that my microwave doesn't actually prepare a dinner for me, it just heats things up.