> If I can’t do it with grep sed awk and cut and a for or while loop then maybe I’m not the right guy to do it. Oh sure, I could learn Python. But I don’t need

> If I can’t do it with grep sed awk and cut and a for or while loop then maybe I’m not the right guy to do it. Oh sure, I could learn Python. But I don’t need Python on a daily basis like I do bash. I get the sentiment but to me it looks like everything looks like a nail when you only have a hammer. Those are fine tools for an ad-hock one-liner. But if you're building something that doesn't fit into a line or two in the terminal you're better of with a proper scripting language. I don't care what it is — Python, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, whatever — anything's better than Shell script. Shell is just too brittle with too many gotchas and edge cases. It's extremely hard to write more than about 10 lines of shell script without bugs. It's even harder to write if you don't know your exact shell. The only exception is that you know your script has to be executed on a system that only has a shell on it and you absolutely can not install/require any other interpreter.