Permit me to vent just a bit:

> Python is a great scripting language, and won't blow your foot off if you try to iterate through an array.

I kind of hate that every time the topic of shell scripting comes up, we get a troop of comments touting this mindless nonsense. Python has footguns, too. Heck, it's absolutely terrible and hacky if you try to do concatenative programming with it. Does that mean it should never be used?

Instead of bashing the language, why not learn bash the language? IME, most of the industry has just absorbed shell programming haphazardly through osmosis, and almost always tries to shove the square pegs of OOP and FP into the round hole that is bash. No wonder people are having a bad time.

In contrast, a data-first design that heavily normalizes data into line-oriented tables and passes information around in pipes results in simple, direct code IME. Stop trying to use arrays and embrace data normalization and text. Also, a lot of pain comes from simply not learning the facilities, e.g. the set builtin obviates most uses of string munging and exec:

    set -- "$@" --file 'filename with spaces.pdf'
    set -- "$@" 'data|blob with "dangerous" characters'
    set -- "$@" "$etc"
    some_command "$@"

Anyway, the senseless bash hate is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine. Exunt.

▲ 3eb7988a1663 2 days ago | parent [-]

All languages have foot guns, but bash is on the more explodey end of the scale. It is not senseless to note that if you can use a safer tool, you should consider it.

C/C++ got us really far, but greenfield projects are moving to safer languages where they can. Expert low level programmers, armed with all of the available linting tools are still making unfortunate mistakes. At some point we should switch to something better.

	▲	xelxebar 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In my years of reading and writing bash as well as Python for sysops tasks, I'd say that bash is the more reliable workhorse of the two. Python tends to encourage a kind of overengineering, resulting in more bugs overall. Many times I've seen hundreds of lines of Python or Typescript result from the attempt to replace just a few lines of bash! The senselessness I object to is not the conscientious choice of tooling or discussion of the failings thereof; it's the fact that every single bash article on here sees the same religious refrain, "Python is better than bash. Period." It's like if every article about vim saw a flood of comments claiming that vim is okay for light editing, but for any real programming we should use a real editor like emacs. If you open vim expecting emacs but with a few different bindings, then it might just explode in you face. If you use bash expecting to be able to program just like Python but with slightly different syntax, then it's not surprising to feel friction. IME, bash works exceptionally well using a data-oriented, text-first design to program architecture. It's just unfortunate that very little of the industry is even aware of this style of programming.
	▲	oguz-ismail 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> At some point we should switch to something better. Agree. Python isn't it though