For me, it is a mess no matter how you look at it. It is because there are so many layers. The way commands are parsed is already not that easy, but then the c

For me, it is a mess no matter how you look at it. It is because there are so many layers. The way commands are parsed is already not that easy, but then the command itself has its own rules, and it is not uncommon to pass a script as an argument. for example if you type "sh -c ls", first it is parsed into exec("sh", "-c", "ls"), then "sh" parses its arguments "-c" and "ls", then a sub-shell is started that parses the command "ls", then the actual "ls" program is launched. This is simple but at every step, there are some quirks, first is all the shell parsing issues, with globs, interpolation and all that. Then you have the issues of how the command parses its arguments (be careful about "-"). Then back to the shell parser with the sub-command, then "ls" itself has its quirks, like locales for instance. I have done Perl (line noise), C++ (memory unsafe with too many features), PHP (injections everywhere), JS (with IE6 support) and none of these languages make me more uncomfortable than UNIX shells.