This is of course a false dichotomy, there's nothing pseudo about using bash (perhaps you mean sudo?) and bash scripts orchestrate what you call 'actual' progra

This is of course a false dichotomy, there's nothing pseudo about using bash (perhaps you mean sudo?) and bash scripts orchestrate what you call 'actual' programs. I commonly write little python scripts to filter logs, which I have read from stdin. That means I can filter a log to stdout: cat logfile.log | python parse_logs.py Or filter them as they're generated: tail -f logfile.log | python parse_logs.py Or write the filtered output to a file: cat logfile.log | python parse_logs.py > filtered.log Or both: tail -f logfile.log | python parse_logs.py | tee filtered.log It would be possible, I suppose, to configure a single python script to do all those things, with flags or whatever. But who on Earth has the time for that?