The only thing I don't quite grok is that, as the complexity of a given bash script increases, it moves ever-closer to looking exactly like the well-written-by-90s-standards Perl I remember from when I was just learning Unix.
Given that Perl's about as ubiquitous as bash (and arguably more so, since I literally don't know any mainstream *nix that ships without Perl in the core, and I know several that ship without bash), why not just use Perl in the first place? This is exactly what it was designed to do well, back in the beginning.
Given that Perl's about as ubiquitous as bash (and arguably more so, since I literally don't know any mainstream *nix that ships without Perl in the core, and I know several that ship without bash), why not just use Perl in the first place? This is exactly what it was designed to do well, back in the beginning.