I'm not convinced. >when should i use shell? >in short; when the problem you're solving is small, well defined, and unlikely to change, consider shell. If yo

I'm not convinced. >when should i use shell? >in short; when the problem you're solving is small, well defined, and unlikely to change, consider shell. If you have to caveat it this much, it's a pretty weak statement. Any language works when the problem is small, well defined, and unlikely to change! Strict POSIX compatibility is something of a chimera. You don't just need to read the POSIX shell spec, because you're not just programming in POSIX shell, you have to use the coreutils as well to get anything done. Do you remember which flags on grep are POSIX-only, and which are extensions provided by the GNU version? And then the same for sed, ls, and the rest of the UNIX zoo? There's an order of magnitude more shit you have to remember and worry about. Needing strict POSIX compatibility is an increasingly niche use-case. I find it baffling that, on the one hand, we have these modern software isolation and distribution systems like containers and Nix and so on, technologies that are meant to let us run anything anywhere reliably, and then we forget we have these marvels and wear the POSIX hair-shirt anyway. Why can't you just include a better language in the container? A container is supposed to contain things! Stop hitting yourself in the face repeatedly! Finally if you somehow really do need to live in the POSIX cave, you don't need to use shell. POSIX also specifies a much saner language: awk.