Your zip example actually demonstrates why Powershell is significantly more powerful than Bash (or any other Unix shell). I presume that if asked "How do you zi

Your zip example actually demonstrates why Powershell is significantly more powerful than Bash (or any other Unix shell). I presume that if asked "How do you zip a file in Bash?" you would reply with something like this: zip archive.zip folder The equivalent Powershell code would look like this: 7zip a archive.zip folder Pretty much exactly the same, since in both cases the shell isn't doing anything other than invoking a standalone executable. So this doesn't really tell us anything at all about the relative merits of Bash and Powershell. A better comparison would be this: how do you zip a folder in Python? Again via Stackoverflow (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1855095/how-to-create-a-zip-archive-of-a-directory-in-python http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1855095/how-to-create-a-z...): import os import zipfile def zipdir(path, zip): for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path): for file in files: zip.write(os.path.join(root, file)) if __name__ == '__main__': zip = zipfile.ZipFile('Python.zip', 'w') zipdir('tmp/', zip) zip.close() Compare that to your Powershell example, and I think you'll agree that the .NET API is nicer to use (heh, don't say that very often). But to return to the subject, how do you zip a folder in Bash? YOU CAN'T. Bash can't zip folders. It can't call libraries that can zip folders. It can only invoke programs that can zip folders. And any shell, even the wretched cmd.exe, can do that. I have plenty of problems with Powershell but it is by far the best effort at a shell that the world has yet seen. I come from a Linux background and when asked what I like about working on Windows, I reply with "well, it's got a nice shell." Usually gets me a weird stare, but if we're really comparing shells to shells (and not shells to a wide variety of standalone utilities) then Powershell blows everything else out of the water.