In Bash's (not that strong) defense, it's a command language. If you're reaching for fancy data structures in it, you've wandered off too far. You're trying to

In Bash's (not that strong) defense, it's a command language. If you're reaching for fancy data structures in it, you've wandered off too far. You're trying to do generic programming in a command language. You're trying to cut a tree with a steak knife. At that point, you should use Python or C or something. It may be the case that command languages are doomed to be terrible general programming languages and general programming languages doomed to be terrible command languages since it seems like that's the case, universally. Therefore, they're totally different niches.