I think, like most things, this would depend on who your audience is. For internal use only where you're running under a consistent environment at all times an

I think, like most things, this would depend on who your audience is. For internal use only where you're running under a consistent environment at all times and aren't worried about portability, it probably makes sense to go with the more explicit long options. For something you're planning to deploy to customers, it probably makes sense to play it pretty strict with POSIX. Likewise, I usually script straight sh for portability if it's going to a customer unless there's a compelling reason to use bash. I'll mix in bash in stuff I write for myself where it makes my life simpler.