> Bash can't handle structured data well. Python (being general purpose programming language) can't handle calling external programs well because it's not the "

> Bash can't handle structured data well. Python (being general purpose programming language) can't handle calling external programs well because it's not the "focus" of the language. Perl and Ruby do both very well. Or at least they do the latter in a simpler way than Python, and they're no worse than it for the former.