[sethrin]

I would not consider those an exception, and would typically prefer to see the use of some other language. Bash is excellent at dealing with semi-structured text, and as part of a command pipeline, and if you have no alternative than to write POSIX sh, well, it exists. Bash does not have niceties like typed variables or named function arguments, and arrays are best avoided. Even parsing command line arguments is more fun in other languages.

The problem is that Bash has about the lowest barrier to entry which can be found: just dump the things you were going to type anyway into a text file and mark it executable. It's simple, and then you bloody your nose on one of Bash's many idiosyncrasies, and people will say, "Oh yes, ']' is just a required last argument to '['. You gotta watch for that." And the true Bash master knows that my rule is silly and that anything may be written in Bash.

Just...please don't.

[mbrock]

I say please don't write any goddamned software at all.