[klibertp]

> you can pretty much guarantee is on any Unix or Linux server, even pretty ancient ones

Well, yes and no. You can get reasonable compatibility with different Unix flavours if you stick to sh. Your script is not going to work on BSDs once you start using bash specific features, though.

Fun fact: on FreeBSD bash does not live in /bin/bash, it's in /usr/local/bin/bash. Every time you write a shebang with /bin/bash hardcoded you're making your script harder to use there.

Perl is everywhere almost by default and it's more compatible as it has just one implementation, without sh/bash/csh/ksh/tcsh/zsh madness. I'd say it's a good idea to use Perl instead of shell script for anything more complicated than a few lines of code if it's meant to be portable. (And I'm not Perl programmer at all).

[loudmax]

Oh that's interesting. I'd assumed that FreeBSD had made bash the default shell around the same time that Mac OS did. I guess my point still stands for /bin/sh. Not a fun programming language though.

[floatboth]

No way. One of FreeBSD's goals is to get rid of everything that's GPL-licensed. bash is not only that, but it's also horrible code.

And it's a user-friendly shell with all the tab completions and history searches, which DOES NOT BELONG IN /bin/sh!

[klibertp]

Exactly, which is the reason why BSDs were not affected by shellshock. And moreover, modern tcsh is quite a powerful and full-featured shell, too.

I unfortunately had to switch to Linux a few years ago (after using FreeBSD for almost a decade) and I still miss how consistent and well laid out BSDs seem in comparison.