[shakna]

This might sound odd.

Instead of writing bash scripts, learn awk.

Awk is old, much older than bash, and has largely gone unchanged since '89.

But, despite the fact it was born in an era where we were still nailing down PLT and what was important in a language, it ticks a lot of boxes.

Having written some sizeable (5000+ LOC) programs in it, it kind of feels like a dynamic mash up of C, and Lisp.

Try Awk, and see if quick scripts are still as painful.