You make good points. The only part I disagree with is "forcing your readers to learn more shell syntax." Who am I to say what the reader does or doesn't know a

You make good points. The only part I disagree with is "forcing your readers to learn more shell syntax." Who am I to say what the reader does or doesn't know about the shell? I don't even know what I don't know about the shell. The language is a minefield. I always have to look up the rules for how prefix/suffix substitution works, or the finer points of heredocs, or just when exactly something should be quoted, or the precedence of boolean operators, or the difference between "[" and "test", or ... Yes, let's be considerate and not use these features. But then we must agree on the specifics of the subset. If we're going to do that, then let's just learn the language proper instead. Or, avoid shell scripts entirely. Maybe there's an analogy with writing prose. I _could_ use rare words and uncommon syntax, but the modern style is a better approach. Is "abstruse" a rare word? Will a reader be frustrated to necessarily learn about split infinitives? What about I/O redirection at the beginning of a command?