[kajkojednojajko]

> the most important thing I've learned about [bash] is: don't. Sure, it can be done, and even done well, but why? There are better languages.

This. Bash gives you all the tools to dig a hole and none to climb out. It's quick and easy to copy commands from your terminal to a file, and it beats not saving them at all.

Support for digging: once you have a shell script, adding one more line conditioned on some env var is more pragmatic than rewriting the script in another language. Apply mathematical induction to grow the script to 1000 lines. Split into multiple files when one becomes too large and repeat.

Missing support for climbing out: janky functions, no modules, user types, or tests; no debugger and no standard library. I've successfully refactored messy python code in the past, but with bash I've had no idea where to even start.

There is hope that LLMs can be used to convert shell scripts to other languages, because they can make the jump that experienced devs have learned to avoid: rewriting from scratch. What else do you do when refactoring in small steps is not feasible?

[thaumasiotes]

I wrote a powershell script to run an ffmpeg workflow. I'm confident that this was a better idea than either of the other two approaches that you seem to be advocating for:

(a) instead of writing a shell script to operate a shell-operated tool, write a python script with a bunch of os.system('shell out') commands.

(b) instead of just invoking ffmpeg to do the things you want done, install an ffmpeg development library, and call the functions that ffmpeg itself calls to do those things.

What would be the argument for either of those?

[pdimitar]

> There is hope that LLMs can be used to convert shell scripts to other languages, because they can make the jump that experienced devs have learned to avoid: rewriting from scratch. What else do you do when refactoring in small steps is not feasible?

There were some languages shown in HN that compile to sh/bash (like oilshell[0]). I would think that's also a viable vector of attack but not sure how viable it actually is i.e. maintainers might have moved on for various reasons.

[0] https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils

[sgarland]

> no modules

Ish. You can source whatever files you want, so if you split up your functions into logical directories / files, you can get modules (-ish).

> no tests

BATS [0].

[0]: https://github.com/bats-core/bats-core

> I've successfully refactored messy python code in the past, but with bash I've had no idea where to even start.

I say this with all kindness: you probably need to know more bash before you can safely refactor it. It is a very pointy and unforgiving language.